A Pacific Northwest forecast of frigid temperatures with snow and ice in some places has Seattle opening shelters while Oregon’s governor and the city of Portland have declared a state of emergency.

Seattle city leaders said Thursday that the city will open two severe weather shelters in the evenings starting Saturday through at least Wednesday. The shelters — at Seattle Center Exhibition Hall and at Compass Housing Alliance — will open at 7 p.m. each day.

National Weather Service in Seattle meteorologist Reid Wolcott said at a news conference with Mayor Jenny Durkan on Thursday that the main concern is cold temperatures in the region with daytime highs next week struggling to reach freezing and overnight lows that could drop to single digits.

“This is a rare event,” Wolcott said. “It’s been years since those of us at the weather service in Seattle have seen forecast data like this.”

Measurable snow is also possible in the Seattle and Portland regions over the weekend, forecasters have said.

“Very cold temperatures will impact vulnerable populations such as the homeless, pets, and those without adequate access to heating,” the National Weather Service said Thursday.

Durkan urged people to stay home if possible, check on neighbors and pets and help to keep sidewalks clear of snow and ice.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a state of emergency declaration Thursday evening to remain in effect through Jan. 3, saying expected snow and sustained temperatures below freezing could result in critical transportation failures and disruptions to power and communications infrastructure.

Her declaration authorizes the Oregon Office of Emergency Management to activate state resources, and to use personnel, equipment, and facilities from other state agencies to respond to the weather emergency.

Earlier Thursday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury also declared states of emergency to continue during the expected days-long cold snap, KOIN-TV reported.

“This will give us the maximum ability to plan, contract and seek additional resources over what could be a very long cold snap stretching to the new year,” Kafoury said at a Thursday news conference.

Five severe weather shelters will also open in Portland and around Multnomah County starting Saturday, officials said.

“Our state has experienced a number of climate-related emergencies this year, and with another coming, I urge all Oregonians to make a plan with your family now and be prepared,” Brown said in a news release. 

 
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Sino-U.S. trade tensions could flare up again as it appears China will miss its obligations under a nearly expired agreement that emerged from a dispute during the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, analysts said. 

The Economic and Trade Agreement signed by the two superpowers in January 2020 is set to end December 31. Trade observers say China has not complied with a clause that obligates it to buy imports of manufactured goods, farm products, energy products and certain services from the U.S. at a total of $200 billion more than the 2017 total. China purchased $186 billion in goods and services in 2017 before the trade war, according to U.S. government figures.

China has had trouble complying because of delays in Chinese aircraft orders from the U.S. and pandemic-related setbacks, said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics with the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies, a research group. 

“I do think that the Biden administration is going to follow through on this agreement and hold China to account,” Goodman told VOA. “I don’t see any reason that they’re going to change tack.”

China had met just 62% of its import purchasing goal as of October, according to an analysis by Chad Bown, senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, another research organization in Washington. 

U.S. manufacturers may have lacked capacity as well to meet the demand for China-bound goods, said Bashar Malkawi, a University of Arizona law professor who specializes in trade. China’s pandemic-era border closures further harmed U.S. exports, he said.

The nearly four-year-old trade dispute launched by Trump over the Sino-U.S. trade imbalance has placed tariffs on $550 billion worth of goods, including $350 billion originating in China. The dispute also led to a chill in broader two-way relations that would run through Trump’s term. 

“The environment between these two countries is toxic,” Malkawi said. “Trade war and mistrust have been raging since 2018 and will not ease for the foreseeable future.”

What’s next 

The U.S. trade representative’s office did not reply to a query for this report asking whether China had lived up to the agreement. Its website does not indicate what might happen in 2022. 

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in October  that the U.S. government will discuss with China its “performance” and that under the agreement, China had made “commitments that benefit certain American industries, including agriculture, that we must enforce.”

The U.S. side will “work to enforce the terms of phase one,” she added, referring to the terms of the deal.

Tai indicated that the United States had yet to review the agreement. 

China hopes the U.S. government “will create favorable conditions for the two nations to expand trade cooperation,” Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Gao Feng said Thursday, as quoted by the China Daily news website. 

Gao said China had “exerted strenuous efforts to offset negative impact from factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economic recession and the constraint of supply chain” to carry out the agreement, according to the website.

China is the largest goods trading partner of the United States, with $559.2 billion passing both ways in 2020, according to the trade representative’s office.

U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled about $615.2 billion in 2020, with imports at $450.4 billion.

Expiration of the trade deal potentially gives China an opening to negotiate for buying the U.S. goods that it needs, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of Malaysian bank CIMB. China traditionally buys U.S. foodstuffs, civilian aircraft and aircraft parts. Its tech firms depended on American supplies before the trade war as well. 

“I suppose it always boils down to what China wants to buy and what the U.S. wants to sell,” Song said. “China can be more selective in buying. Politics matters more at this point.” 

Chinese officials might consider asking to buy the U.S. goods that China needs most, possibly swapping out the ones in today’s agreement, said Stuart Orr, School of Business head at Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. 

“I think China is probably going to have to try to renegotiate, and the reason probably motivating that will be the volume of supplies of some of the things that it actually needs,” he said.
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Jurors on Thursday convicted a former suburban Minneapolis police officer of two manslaughter charges in the killing of Daunte Wright, a Black motorist she shot during a traffic stop. 

The mostly white jury deliberated for about four days before finding former Brooklyn Center Officer Kim Potter guilty of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. Potter, 49, faces about seven years in prison on the most serious count under the state’s sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors said they would seek a longer term. 

Potter, who said she had confused her gun for her Taser at the time of the shooting and testified that she “didn’t want to hurt anybody,” looked down without showing any visible reaction when the verdicts were read. 

Potter, who is white, shot and killed Wright, 20, during an April 11 traffic stop in Brooklyn Center as she and other officers were trying to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for a weapons possession charge. The shooting happened at a time of high tension in the area, with former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin standing trial just miles away for the killing of George Floyd. Potter resigned two days later. 

Jurors saw video of the shooting that was captured by police body cameras and dashcams. It showed Potter and an officer she was training, Anthony Luckey, had stopped Wright for having expired license plates, as well as an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror. During the stop, Luckey discovered there was a warrant for Wright’s arrest for not appearing in court on the weapons possession charge, and he, Potter and another officer went to take Wright into custody. 

‘I just shot him’

Wright obeyed Luckey’s order to get out of his car, but as Luckey tried to handcuff him, Wright pulled away and got back in. As Luckey held on to Wright, Potter said, “I’ll tase ya.” The video then shows Potter holding her gun in her right hand and pointing it at Wright. Again, Potter said, “I’ll tase you,” and then two seconds later: “Taser, Taser, Taser.” One second later, she fired a single bullet into Wright’s chest. 

“[Expletive]! I just shot him. … I grabbed the wrong [expletive] gun,” Potter said. A minute later, she said: “I’m going to go to prison.”

In sometimes tearful testimony, Potter told jurors that she was “sorry it happened.” She said the traffic stop “just went chaotic” and that she shouted her warning about the Taser after she saw a look of fear on the face of Sergeant Mychal Johnson, who was leaning into the passenger-side door of Wright’s car. She also told jurors that she didn’t remember what she said or everything that happened after the shooting, as much of her memory of those moments was “missing.”

Potter’s lawyers argued that she made a mistake by drawing her gun instead of her Taser. But they also said she would have been justified in using deadly force if she had meant to because Johnson was at risk of being dragged. 

Prosecutors sought to raise doubts about Potter’s testimony that she decided to act after seeing fear on Johnson’s face. Prosecutor Erin Eldridge, in cross-examination, pointed out that in an interview with a defense expert Potter said she didn’t know why she decided to draw her Taser. During her closing argument, Eldridge also replayed Potter’s body-camera video that she said never gave a clear view of Johnson’s face during the key moments. 

Eldridge also downplayed testimony from some other officers who described Potter as a good person or said they saw nothing wrong in her actions: “The defendant has found herself in trouble and her police family has her back.” 

Prosecutors also got Potter to agree that she didn’t plan to use deadly force. They said Potter, an experienced officer with extensive training in Taser use and use of deadly force, acted recklessly and betrayed the badge. 
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the release of White House records sought by the House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s request came two weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the former president had no basis to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden’s decision to allow the documents to be handed over. That decision will remain on hold until the Supreme Court acts.

Biden had previously determined that the records, which belong to the executive branch, should not be subject to executive privilege, which protects the confidentially of some internal White House communications, and that turning them over to Congress was in the best interest of the nation.

Trump’s lawyers say in their court filing that the House Select Committee’s request is “exceedingly broad” and an “unprecedented encroachment on executive privilege.”

The appeals court ruling was another blow to the Republican former president and his allies, who have waged an ongoing legal battle with the committee over access to documents and witnesses.

The committee has asked the National Archives, the U.S. agency housing Trump’s White House records, to produce visitor logs, phone records and written communications between his advisers.

The panel has said it needs the records to understand any role Trump may have played in fomenting the violence.

Trump has argued that he can invoke executive privilege based on the fact that he was president at the time even though he is no longer in office.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Nov. 9 rejected Trump’s arguments, saying he had not acknowledged the “deference owed” to Biden’s determination that the committee could access the records. adding: “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three justices appointed by Trump, but it has not always been receptive to his requests.

In February, the court rejected  his request to block disclosure of his tax records as part of a criminal investigation in New York and in 2020 also turned away attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn  that year’s presidential election, which he lost to Biden.
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The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits was unchanged last week, remaining at a historically low level that reflects the job market’s strong recovery from the coronavirus recession last year.

Jobless claims remained at 205,000. The four-week average, which smooths out week-to-week ups and downs, rose to just over 206,000. The numbers suggest that the spread of the omicron variant did not immediately trigger a wave of layoffs.

Altogether, 1.9 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment aid the week that ended Dec. 11.

The weekly claims numbers, a proxy for layoffs, have fallen steadily most of the year. Employers are reluctant to let workers go at a time when it’s so tough to find replacements. The United States had a near-record 11 million job openings in October, and 4.2 million Americans quit their jobs — just off September’s record 4.4 million — because there are so many opportunities.

The job market has bounced back from last year’s brief but intense coronavirus recession. When COVID hit, governments ordered lockdowns, consumers hunkered down at home and many businesses closed or cut back hours.

Employers slashed more than 22 million jobs in March and April 2020, and the unemployment rate rocketed to 14.8%.

But massive government spending — and eventually the rollout of vaccines — brought the economy back. Employers have added 18.5 million jobs since April 2020, still leaving the U.S. still 3.9 million jobs short of what it had before the pandemic. The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2%, close to what economists consider full employment.
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A rust-colored almanac from 1875, a cloth envelope and a silver coin were found Wednesday in a time capsule that sat beneath a towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia for more than 130 years.

Two other books and a small pamphlet were also found inside the small time capsule.

But conservators were expecting to find many more items.

Records from the Library of Virginia also suggested that 37 Richmond residents, organizations and businesses contributed about 60 objects to the capsule, many of which are believed to be related to the Confederacy.

The time capsule had sat under the massive bronze equestrian statue of Lee, who led the Confederate Army during the 1861-65 U.S. Civil War that pitted several slave-holding southern states against the antislavery northern states.

The monument was long seen as a symbol of racial injustice before it was dismantled in September. 

 
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China on Wednesday defended its international scientific exchange programs in the wake of the conviction of a Harvard University professor charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China manages such exchanges along the same lines as the U.S. and other countries.

U.S. agencies and officials should not “stigmatize” such programs and “instead do something conducive to China-U.S. scientific and people-to-people exchanges and cooperation,” Zhao said.

Charles Lieber, 62, the former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, pleaded not guilty to filing false tax returns, making false statements, and failing to file reports for a foreign bank account in China.

Lieber’s defense attorney, Marc Mukasey, had argued that prosecutors lacked proof of the charges, maintaining that investigators kept no records of their interviews with Lieber prior to his arrest.

Prosecutors argued that Lieber, who was arrested in January 2020, knowingly hid his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan to protect his career and reputation. The Chinese program is designed to recruit people with knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property who could pass secrets on to China.

Lieber denied his involvement during inquiries from U.S. authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, which had provided him with millions of dollars in research funding, prosecutors said.

Lieber also concealed his income from the Chinese program, including $50,000 a month from the Wuhan University of Technology, up to $158,000 in living expenses and more than $1.5 million in grants, according to prosecutors.

In exchange, they said, Lieber agreed to publish articles, organize international conferences and apply for patents on behalf of the Chinese university.

The case is among the highest profile to come from the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative.”

The effort, launched in 2018 to curb economic espionage from China, has faced criticism that it harms academic research and amounts to racial profiling of Chinese researchers.

Hundreds of faculty members at Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Temple and other prominent colleges have signed letters to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on him to end the initiative.

The academics say the effort compromises the nation’s competitiveness in research and technology and has had a chilling effect on recruiting foreign scholars. The letters also complain the investigations have disproportionally targeted researchers of Chinese origin.

Lieber has been on paid administrative leave from Harvard since being arrested. 
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