News in Brief
China's ‘strong dissatisfaction’ with G7
AFP – China on Saturday expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with a statement issued by G7 leaders that took aim at Beijing on issues including the South China Sea, human rights and alleged interference in their democracies.
China’s Foreign Ministry hit back on Saturday evening, saying the G7’s “approach has no international credibility whatsoever”.
“The G7 insisted on manipulating China-related issues, smearing and attacking China,” a spokesman for the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Turks abroad begin voting in presidential runoff
REUTERS – Turkish citizens based abroad began voting on Saturday in Turkey’s presidential runoff election between the incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Some 3.4 million Turks are eligible to vote abroad, out of a total electorate of more than 64 million, and will cast their ballots from May 20-24.
No progress on US debt ceiling
REUTERS – A second meeting on Friday between White House and Republican congressional negotiators on raising the federal government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling broke up with no progress cited by either side and no additional meeting set.
That came at the end of a day of acrimonious talks that were broken off for several hours, with less than two weeks to go before June 1, when the Treasury Department warned that the federal government could be unable to pay all its debts. That would trigger a calamitous default.