AFP

President Joe Biden’s administration tried Friday to defuse heated Chinese warnings against a possible trip to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as Beijing announced live-fire military drills in the Taiwan Strait.

Pelosi is reportedly about to leave on an Asian tour that would include Taiwan — although she pointedly refused to confirm Friday that she would visit the self-ruled island citing travel security considerations.

China sees any such stop by the speaker as a provocation, upsetting the tense status quo under which Washington formally recognizes China’s sovereignty claim over the island — while backing the democratic Taiwanese government.

“We have many differences when it comes to Taiwan, but over the past 40-plus years, we have managed those differences and done it in a way that has preserved peace and stability and has allowed the people on Taiwan to flourish,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“It would be important as part of our shared responsibility to continue to manage this in a wise way that doesn’t create the prospect for conflict and keeping open lines of communication on this issue.” 

The temperature has been steadily rising in Beijing over the prospect of a Pelosi trip.

A day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Biden in a lengthy phone call that the United States shouldn’t “play with fire” when it comes to Taiwan, the communist country’s state-run media announced drills in the region Saturday.

“Live ammunition will be fired… between 8:00 am and 9:00 pm (0000-1300 GMT) and any entry (into these waters) will be prohibited”, said a government statement.

The statement did not mention Pelosi. Also, the location of the exercise is just off mainland China’s shore, rather than out at sea in the straits nearer to Taiwan.

However, there appears to be little doubt in the messaging.

While US officials often make discreet visits to the island in a show of support for its democratic self-ruling government, Pelosi is second in line to the US presidency and one of the country’s most powerful politicians.

Pelosi, who would be traveling on US military aircraft during her Asia tour, told reporters Friday that she planned the trip because of the Biden administration’s “strong emphasis” on the Asia-Pacific region.

But she continued to refuse to confirm or deny plans for a stop in Taiwan. “I don’t ever talk about my travels, because some of you know, it’s a security issue,” she said.

– ‘Shoot them down’ –

What China might actually do remains unclear.

A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said “a visit to Taiwan by Speaker Pelosi would challenge China’s red line, and any challenge to our red line will no doubt be met with resolute countermeasures.”

In his comments to Biden, reported by Chinese state media, Xi made an equally heated, but vague statement, saying “those who play with fire will eventually get burned.”

The area where Saturday’s Chinese maneuvers are set to take place is located on Pingtan island, which is in the Taiwan Straits, but about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the actual Taiwanese coast.

However, a commentator for the state-run Global Times newspaper urged intercepting Pelosi’s plane.

“If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is invasion. The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down,” wrote Hu Xijin.

John Kirby, spokesman for Biden’s National Security Council, played down what he called “bellicose rhetoric.”

“We’ve seen no physical, tangible indications of anything untoward with respect to Taiwan,” he said.

Stressing there was no change in the US policy of acknowledging Beijing’s legal sovereignty over Taiwan, Kirby also said “there’s no need” for China to react so harshly.

While Pelosi is a close political ally of fellow Democrat Biden, her diplomatic foray has put the president in a tricky position as he tries managing an increasingly high-stakes relationship with China.

Despite the tension, however, Biden and Xi agreed in their call Thursday to set up a first in-person summit at a still to be decided date.

“The president believes it’s really important to keep open lines of communication,” Kirby said.

For Brett Eagleson, this week’s Saudi-backed golf event at Trump National is an affront: it’s happening just miles from where hijackers murdered his father on 9/11.

“It’s extremely disrespectful, it’s hurtful, it’s painful,” Eagleson, who was 15 when his dad died in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, told AFP.

The 36-year-old heads 9/11 Justice, a group that accuses Saudi Arabia of complicity in the atrocity — allegations the Saudi government has denied.

Ex-president Donald Trump’s course in Bedminster, New Jersey, less than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Ground Zero, is hosting LIV Golf’s third event this weekend.

Eagleson was among a few dozen relatives of victims and survivors of the Al-Qaeda attacks, which killed 3,000 people, who gathered near the course Friday ahead of the three-day tournament’s start.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the coordinated attacks on New York and Washington were Saudi nationals. An FBI memo released last year hinted at official Saudi involvement.

Trump himself claimed in 2016 while he was running for president that Saudi Arabia was responsible, without providing any evidence.

“(Now) he chooses to host the kingdom at his course in the backyard where 750 people were blown away,” said Eagleson, referencing the number of New Jersey residents killed on 9/11.

“It’s incredibly infuriating,” he said.

Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV has sought to lure top golfers from the establishment PGA and DP World tours with contracts that have run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Human Rights groups say the venture is a “sportswashing” exercise being used to boost Saudi Arabia’s international reputation. Organizers insist their intention is to boost golf’s popularity worldwide.

Avid golfer Trump has emerged as a vocal advocate for LIV, urging players to “take the money” and sign with the circuit.

Trump played in Thursday’s pro-am at Bedminster, alongside two of LIV’s highest-profile recruits — major winners Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson.

He brushed off criticism from 9/11 families in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week.

– ‘Money over morality’ –

But Eagleson says Trump’s involvement will hurt him politically as he mulls whether to run for the White House again in 2024.

“Some of our biggest 9/11 advocates are family members of FDNY and NYPD. And those have been some of Trump’s biggest supporters. Well, not anymore,” he said.

LIV organizers have said previously that 9/11 families “have our deepest sympathy,” but that “we believe golf is a force for good around the world.”

For Tim Frolich, who was injured on 9/11, the tournament has reopened old wounds.

“I had trouble sleeping last night, just the anger,” the 58-year-old told AFP as relatives held up photos of their late loved ones and wore T-shirts saying “never forget.”

Eagleson’s father, Bruce Eagleson, was at a meeting on the 17th floor of the South Tower when hijackers slammed United Airlines Flight 175 into the skyscraper. He was 53.

Eagleson says his father was a huge golf fan whose favorite player was Phil Mickelson, one of the first players to defect to LIV.

“I don’t know how he lives with himself,” Eagleson said of Mickelson. “He’s literally choosing to take the money over any sense of morality.”

More protests are planned for upcoming LIV events in Boston, Chicago and Miami, the latter tournament being held at another Trump course.

“We’re not going away anytime soon,” said Eagleson.

US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron — targets of White House criticism over soaring gasoline costs — reported record quarterly profits Friday amid the war in Ukraine that sparked a steep rise in energy prices.

With crude surging above $100 a barrel shortly after the Russian invasion, and refining margins climbing due to tight plant capacity, ExxonMobil scored $17.9 billion in profits and Chevron $11.6 billion in the just-finished second quarter.

The results come on the heels of similarly jaw-dropping figures from European petroleum heavyweights, with Shell reporting $18 billion in profits, TotalEnergies $5.7 billion and Eni $3.8 billion.

ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods said the strong results “reflect our focus on the fundamentals and the investments we put in motion several years ago and sustained through the depths of the pandemic.”

Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said the company is “increasing energy supplies to help meet the challenges facing global markets.”

Although gas prices at the pump have dropped in the past month, the massive profits drew criticism from advocacy group Public Citizens, which said on Twitter that “corporate greed is suffocating the working class.” 

Progressive US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called for a windfall profits tax.

“While you were feeling pain at the pump, Shell, Exxon and Chevron raked in $46 billion in profits over the last three months and said they would spend up to $47 billion on stock buybacks after spending $18.8 billion so far this year,” sanders said.

– More buybacks –

The latest three months have proved a heady period for the oil industry.

Crude prices traded between $95 and $120 a barrel during the quarter, as the war and the wave of sanctions on Moscow lifted the oil market back to levels last seen in 2008. 

The ensuing surge in US gasoline prices to an all-time high in mid-June has squeezed American families and pressured President Joe Biden, who has had a fractious relationship with ExxonMobil and Chevron and the oil industry more generally.

In June, Biden notoriously said “Exxon made more money than God this year” as he ripped the industry for spending excess cash on share buybacks instead of significantly boosting capital spending.

On Friday, both companies reported higher oil and natural gas volumes in the United States, with ExxonMobil boosted by an increased 130,000 barrels of oil-equivalent in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, and Chevron notching a three percent rise in US volumes.

ExxonMobil plans to add 250,000 barrels per day of refining capacity at its Beaumont, Texas plant in the first quarter of 2023, representing “the industry’s largest single capacity addition in the US since 2012,” Woods said in a news release.

Both companies reported big increases in revenues, with ExxonMobil’s jumping 71 percent to $115.7 billion and Chevron 83 percent to $69 billion.

But the two companies, which suffered significant financial losses early in the Covid-19 pandemic as petroleum demand tanked, have not used the mountains of cash from higher prices to significantly lift capital spending, which remains below the level prior to the pandemic.

Instead, the companies have been steering funds to shareholders. ExxonMobil paid out $7.6 billion in distributions during the quarter, while Chevron lifted the top end of its annual share repurchase range to $15 billion from $10 billion.

Shares of ExxonMobil jumped 4.1 percent to $96.39 in trading near midday, while Chevron leaped 8.5 percent higher to $163.19.

The death toll from severe flooding in Kentucky hit 16 on Friday and is expected to double, the US state’s governor said, after torrential rains caused flash floods that swept away some homes while people slept.

“Tough news is 16 confirmed fatalities now, and folks that’s going to get a lot higher,” Governor Andy Beshear said at a media briefing.

“It is devastating,” Beshear told CNN earlier in the day, saying he expected the toll to “more than double.”

“Some people’s houses were completely swept away in the middle of the night while they were sleeping,” the governor said.

Hundreds of people had been rescued by boat and there had been about 50 aerial rescues using National Guard helicopters, he said.

With many roads washed out “we still can’t get to a lot of people,” the governor said.

“The current is so strong it’s not safe for some of those water rescues that we need to do.”

Eastern Kentucky has had flash flooding previously “but we’ve never seen something like this,” Beshear said.

“Folks who deal with this for a living, who have been doing it for 20 years, have never seen water this high.”

Some areas of the state’s Appalachia region reported receiving more than eight inches (20 centimeters) of rain in a 24-hour period.

The water level of the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Whitesburg rose to a staggering 20 feet within hours, well above its previous record of 14.7 feet.

– Disaster declaration –

Many roads resembled rivers, mangled cars littered the landscape and muddy brown floodwaters lapped against the rooftops of low-lying houses.

Kayla Brown, 29, and Joe Salley Jr., 56, residents of Perry County, told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the fast-rising flood waters trapped them in their mobile home.

“It was like a wave coming at you out of the ocean,” Salley said.

Neighbors came to their rescue after their trailer was knocked off its foundations.

Four young children ranging in age from one and a half to eight years old were swept away from their parents in hard-hit Knott County, the Herald-Leader reported. 

Brittany Trejo, the siblings’ cousin, told the newspaper the bodies of two of the children had been found, but the other two were still missing.

Their parents were rescued after clinging to a tree for eight hours, Trejo told the Herald-Leader.

“They managed to get to a tree and… held the children a few hours before a big tide came and washed them all away,” Trejo said.

The eastern Kentucky flooding is the latest in a series of extreme weather events that scientists say are an unmistakable sign of climate change.

Nearly 60 people were killed in western Kentucky by a tornado in December 2021.

The National Weather Service warned that more heavy rain was expected on Friday.

President Joe Biden issued a disaster declaration for Kentucky, allowing federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, arrived in Kentucky on Friday to tour flood-hit areas and report back to the president.

Moscow and Kyiv on Friday accused each other of bombing a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held territory, with Russia saying 40 prisoners and eight prison staff were killed.

Russia’s defence ministry said the Ukrainian strikes were carried out with US-supplied long-range missiles, in an “egregious provocation” designed to stop soldiers surrendering.

It said that among the dead were Ukrainian forces that had laid down their arms after repelling Moscow’s assault on the sprawling Azovstal steel works in Mariupol.

The claims came as President Volodymyr Zelensky visited a port in southern Ukraine to oversee a ship being loaded with grain for export under a UN-backed plan aimed at ending a food crisis.

Ukraine’s presidency said exports could start in the “coming days” under the plan aimed at getting millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain stranded by Russia’s naval blockade to world markets.

– ‘Petrifying war crime’ –

Following the strike on the prison, Russian state-television showed what appeared to be destroyed barracks and tangled metal beds but no casualties could be seen.

Ukraine’s military denied carrying out the attack saying its forces “did not launch missile and artillery strikes in the area of Olenivka settlement.”

It instead blamed Russia’s invading forces for “a targeted artillery shelling” on the detention facility, saying it was being used to “accuse Ukraine of committing ‘war crimes’, as well as to hide the torture of prisoners and executions”.

“Russia has committed another petrifying war crime by shelling a correctional facility in occupied” Olenivka where it held Ukrainian POWs, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

Ukraine’s army said in a statement that the attack was “not coordinated with the leadership” of Russia’s defence ministry and was used to conceal the “embezzlement of funds” allocated for Ukrainian POWs. 

Ukraine’s forces in May ended a weeks-long siege of Azovstal, with around 2,500 combatants surrendering after calling a halt to their first resistance. 

Moscow’s state media has reported that some officers — including those from the controversial Azov regiment — have been taken into Russia. 

Kyiv says it has captured thousands of Russian troops during the invasion and has begun putting some on trial for alleged war crimes. 

A Ukrainian court on Friday reduced the life sentence handed to a Russian soldier in May for pre-meditated murder in the country’s first war crimes trial, instead jailing the serviceman for 15 years.

– Mykolaiv strikes –

Russian strikes elsewhere in Ukraine killed five people and wounded seven more on Friday on the heavily bombed city of Mykolaiv near the country’s southern frontline, the regional governor said.

“They shot at another area near a public transport stop,” governor Vitaliy Kim said in a statement on social media.

Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, has seen roughly half of its estimated pre-war population of nearly 500,000 people leave and the city has been shelled daily for weeks.

It is the largest Ukrainian-controlled urban hub near the frontlines in the Kherson region, where Kyiv’s army has launched a counter-offensive to regain control of the economically and strategically important coastal territory.

The Ukrainian presidency said Friday that Russian strikes on the city a day earlier had struck a humanitarian aid distribution point and injured three people.

In the eastern Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko also said Friday that Moscow’s forces had killed eight people and wounded 19 more in attacks over the previous day.

– Grain ship loading –

The ceaseless violence on the ground comes as Ukraine looks to push ahead with restarting crucial grain exports under a plan brokered by Turkey and the United Nations to lift Russia’s Black Sea naval blockade. 

Ukraine’s presidency released footage of Zelensky standing in front of Turkish ship Polarnet in the port of Chornomorsk on a visit to inspect grain being loaded.

“The first vessel, the first ship is being loaded since the beginning of the war,” Zelensky said in a statement. 

Zelensky said Kyiv was “waiting for a signal” from Ankara and UN to start exports that it is hoped will help mitigate a global food crisis that has seen prices soar. 

According to Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry, 17 ships had been loaded with grain in the ports of Chornomorsk and neighbouring Odessa with 10 ready for departure.

The hike in food costs is just one of the shock waves that Moscow’s war in Ukraine has sent reverberating around the world.

Energy prices have also risen dramatically as Moscow has cut gas supplies to Europe and the turbulence has wracked the oil markets. 

The French presidency said that leader Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had agreed to work together to limit the impact of the war at talks in Paris. 

Macron took the meeting despite fierce criticism from rights groups in a bid to get major crude producer Saudi Arabia to up its production. 

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Actor Will Smith has posted an emotional new apology for slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars earlier this year, revealing in a lengthy video clip that he has reached out to the comedian who was not yet “ready to talk.”

Smith — who went on to win the best actor award — marched on stage and hit Rock for making a joke about his wife, in an incident that overshadowed the March ceremony, being broadcast live around the world.

“Chris, I apologize to you. My behavior was unacceptable. And I’m here, whenever you’re ready to talk,” Smith reiterated said in the nearly six-minute video, in which he also answered fans’ questions about the shocking moment that has tarnished his public image.

Smith had made a public apology shortly after the incident, and was banned from attending the Oscars for the next 10 years after the slap. 

The 53-year-old also resigned his membership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — although the organization did not revoke his best actor award for “King Richard.”

In the video posted to social media Friday, Smith said his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who was seated next to him and grimaced as Rock joked about her, said nothing to prompt his attack.

“I made a choice on my own,” he said, apologizing also to Pinkett-Smith and the couple’s children “for the heat that I brought on all of us.”

“There’s no part of me that thinks that’s the optimal way to handle a feeling of disrespect or insults,” says the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor, who at one point in the video appears to be fighting tears.

Rock addressed the slap earlier this month during a stand-up set in New Jersey, Us Weekly has reported. 

“Anyone who says words hurt has never been punched in the face,” he reportedly joked, before adding “I’m not a victim… I don’t go to the hospital for a papercut.”