China Doling Out Loans to Countries

Harris’ weeklong African tour, which got underway Monday in Ghana’s capital, Accra, is part of an effort to flip the script and demonstrate that the United States views African nations not as problems to be solved or pawns in a superpower contest with China and Russia, but as hubs of opportunity and creativity.

“African ingenuity and innovation, I am certain, will shape the future of the world,” she said at a news briefing.

Harris is the highest-ranking in a recent parade of officials from the Biden administration to visit the continent. She met with President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, commending him for his “democratic principles.” Harris will later fly to Tanzania and Zambia.

But her attempt to change the narra-

Moves to curtail certain people’s rights have been on the rise in several African nations, including Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia. The White House said last week that it would consider economic penalties against Uganda after lawmakers there passed legislation that calls for life in prison for those who perform certain acts.

Asked about those restrictions in a news conference with the Ghanaian president, Harris said she had “raised the issue” — although she did not say with whom or in which countries.

The United States is at a disadvantage compared with China, which has in the past few decades invested heavily in many African countries, mined for raw materials and built infrastructure projects through its “Belt and Road” program. China’s involvement, unlike that of the United States, usually comes without expectations about human rights standards, working conditions or environmental protection. (© The New York Times)

Since the end of World War II, the International Monetary Fund and the United States have been the world’s lenders of last resort, each wielding broad influence over the global economy. Now a new heavyweight has emerged in providing emergency loans to debt-ridden countries: China.

New data shows that China is providing ever more emergency loans to countries, including Turkey, Argentina, and Sri Lanka. China has been helping countries that have either geopolitical significance, such as a strategic location, or lots of natural resources. Many of them have been borrowing heavily from Beijing for years to pay for infrastructure or other projects.

While China is not yet equal to the IMF, it is catching up fast, providing $240 billion of emergency financing in recent years. China gave $40.5 billion in such loans to distressed countries in 2021, according to a new study by American and European experts who drew on statistics from AidData, a research institute at William and Mary, a university in Williamsburg, Virginia. China provided $10 billion in 2014 and none in 2010. By comparison, the IMF lent $68.6 billion to countries in financial distress in 2021 — a pace that has stayed fairly steady in recent years except for a jump in 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

In many ways, China has replaced the United States in bailing out indebted lowand middle-income countries. The U.S. Treasury’s last sizable rescue loan to a middle-income country was a $1.5 billion credit to Uruguay in 2002. The Federal Reserve still provides short-term financing to other industrialized countries when they need ex- tra dollars for a few days or weeks.

China’s emerging position as a lender of last resort reflects its evolving status as an economic superpower at a time of global weakness. Dozens of countries are struggling to pay their debts, as a slowing economy and rising interest rates push many nations to the brink.

Beijing’s new role is also an outgrowth of the decade-old Belt and Road Initiative, the signature project of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, to develop geopolitical and diplomatic ties through financial and commercial efforts. China has lent $900 billion to 151 lower-income countries worldwide, mainly for the construction of highways, bridges, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure. (© The New York Times)

Fire in Mexican Detention Center

On Monday, a fire tore through a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez. Dozens of migrants were left dead in the blaze, in one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country.

Juárez is a major crossing point for migrants.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute reported at least 39 people died and 29 were injured and are in “delicate-serious” condition. There were 68 men from Central and South America held in the facility at the time of the fire.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at his morning news conference in Mexico City said the fire was started by migrants at the center during a protest after learning some of them would be deported.

The migrants stacked mats up against a door and set them on fire not knowing it “would cause this terrible disgrace,” the Mexican leader said.

Tensions between authorities and migrants had apparently been running high in recent weeks in Juárez, where shelters are full of people waiting for opportunities to cross into the U.S. or who have requested asylum there and are waiting out the process.

More than 30 migrant shelters and other advocacy organizations published an open letter on March 9 that complained of a criminalization of migrants and asylum-seekers in the city. It accused authorities of abuse and using excessive force in rounding up migrants, complaining that municipal police were questioning people in the street about their immigration status without cause.

The high level of frustration in

Juárez was evident earlier this month when hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants acting on false rumors that the United States would allow them to enter the country tried to force their way across one of the international bridges to El Paso. U.S. authorities blocked their attempts.

In recent years, as Mexico has stepped up efforts to stem the flow migration to the U.S. border under pressure from the U.S., the agency has struggled with overcrowding in its facilities.

A Gesture of Peace Between Taiwan and China

nior Chinese officials while there, but the head of his foundation said last week that Ma will be “at his host’s disposal” if they do arrange such a get-together.

Battling Over Time in Lebanon

This week, Taiwan’s ex-President Ma Ying-jeou became the first sitting or former Taiwanese leader to visit mainland China since the Communist revolution in 1949. The former leader said he hoped to bring about peace and improve relations.

Speaking to reporters before leaving from Taiwan’s main international airport at Taoyuan, Ma, 73, said he was “very happy” to be going on a trip where he will talk to students and pay respects to the graves of his ancestors in China.

Ma was Taiwan’s president from 2008-2016. Tsai Ing-wen is the current president.

The trip comes at a time of heightened tensions between Beijing and Taipei as China keeps up military and political pressure to try and get democratic Taiwan to accept Chinese sovereignty.

Taiwan’s ruling DPP criticized Ma for visiting China, saying it was inappropriate given former long-time Taiwan ally Honduras had ended ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing the day before.

Ma is a senior member of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), which favors close ties with China although it strongly denies being pro-Beijing. The KMT says outreach to China is needed now more than ever given the tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

China has rebuffed current Taiwanese President Tsai’s repeated calls for talks, believing her to be a separatist. She says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

Ma is not scheduled to meet any se-

When two of Lebanon’s top leaders decided to delay daylight saving time by a month, they were aiming to ensure that Muslims would not have to break their dawn-to-sunset fast an hour later during the holy month of Ramadan.

But the decision last week sent the nation into a tailspin and set off a firestorm of outrage. On Monday, the officials backtracked and said the clock change would go ahead around midweek, just a few days later than originally planned.

Christian clergy and leaders of Christian political parties had rejected the last-minute change, made by two senior Muslim officials — Prime Minister Najib Mikati and House Speaker Nabih Berri — without consulting other religious groups. They vowed that they would abide by daylight saving time regardless of what the officials had decreed. And many other Lebanese found their lives upended, as they were forced to navigate between two time zones.

The country — which is smaller than the state of Connecticut — was already caught up in multiple crises, grappling with severe economic turmoil and political paralysis. And in a nation divided mainly between Muslims and Christians with a long history of violent sectarian and religious conflict, the time change decision immediately aggravated those deep rifts.

“Do the Lebanese people not have enough problems they are going through to add to them the problem of time?” the Greek Orthodox archbishop, Elias Odeh, said in his Sunday sermon, expressing sadness over how the issue had taken on a sectarian overtone.

Lebanon is divided among Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians, and smaller religious minorities. Although a 15-year civil war fought mainly between Muslims and Christian militias ended in 1990, the sectarian scars live on.

The decision to delay the time change was made on Thursday, the same day that Ramadan began.

After the outrage spilled into the new week, Mikati met with Cabinet members on Monday afternoon — something he did not do before announcing the initial change — and announced that Lebanon would, indeed, switch to daylight saving time overnight between Wednesday and Thursday.

The national airline, Middle East Airlines, announced that flight departure times from Beirut’s international airport would be adjusted by an hour, in line with daylight saving time. A widely shared video from the airport showed a board with two different times on either side: one for flights and the other for taxis. (© The New York Times)

Chometz Law

create religious coercion in order to solve a problem that does not exist,” according to a Channel 12 report.

The charedi United Torah Judaism party sponsored the bill, outraged after a 2020 High Court of Justice ruling blocked hospitals from searching bags to check for chometz in response to petitions decrying the searches as invasive and religiously intrusive.

Israeli Released from UAE

This week, the Knesset enacted legislation that enables hospitals to ban the entry of chometz on Pesach.

This law is a softened version of what was proposed. It allows hospital administrators to set a policy against bringing in chometz and to post it on their website or with signage at entrances, but does not explicitly allow security guards to search patients’ or visitors’ bags to enforce the policy.

Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid denounced the legislation, telling the Knesset plenum it would cause pushback against what many feel is religious coercion.

“You will cause there to be much less Passover [observance] and fewer people” refraining from eating leavened products in general, he warned.

The Israel Hofsheet organization, which advocates for “religious freedom” in Israel, slammed the legislation, saying it “sends the hospital administrators to

Fida Kiwan, an Israeli woman from Haifa who was jailed for drug trafficking last year and had originally faced execution in the United Arab Emirates, has been pardoned and released by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in honor of Ramadan.

“I can’t believe my daughter is back,” Kewan’s mother, Sabah, told Walla news.

Fida Kewan was arrested in Abu Dhabi in March of last year, accused of drug trafficking and sentenced to death. Her sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the court in the United Arab Emirates.

In the past year, her family members, including her mother, brother and sister, have been in contact with the office of President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, claiming that she fell victim to a ruse and working to secure her release.

Herzog submitted a personal humanitarian appeal to UAE’s president a few weeks ago, and in recent days, the President’s Office and the Israeli embassy in the UAE led by Ambassador Amir Hayek have been working with authorities in the Gulf nation on the technical aspects of Kiwan’s release and return to Israel.

Kiwan’s attorneys said in a statement, “We thank the president of the country for his commitment to the operation. We also thank Sheikh bin Zayed, the prince of the Emirates, for the pardon on the occasion of Ramadan.” (JNS)