We’re overlaying commerce tensions between the U.S. and China, and New Zealand’s shifting gears on Covid.

The Biden administration offered its strongest signal yet that the U.S. would preserve the combative financial strategy towards China that was adopted below former President Trump, utilizing commerce limitations and different punitive measures.

Senior administration officers mentioned earlier than U.S.-China commerce talks that President Biden wouldn’t instantly carry tariffs on Chinese language items and that he would maintain Beijing accountable for commerce agreements made throughout the Trump administration.

Katherine Tai, the U.S. commerce consultant, mentioned she would start talks within the coming days together with her Chinese language counterpart. “We are going to use the total vary of instruments we now have and develop new instruments as wanted to defend American financial pursuits from dangerous insurance policies and practices,” she mentioned in a speech on Monday.

Particulars: The technique would require China to uphold commitments from an preliminary commerce deal reached in 2020, together with its promise to purchase a further $200 billion value of American items and providers by 2021. China is on tempo to fall in need of its buying commitments, in line with one skilled monitoring the purchases.

However in a transfer that would offer some aid for companies that import Chinese language merchandise, U.S. officers mentioned they might convey again a course of that excludes sure firms from tariffs.

Context: Biden’s hard-line strategy to China comes at a second of extraordinary stress between the world’s largest and second-largest economies and remarkably little interchange between their governments.

Associated: Shares of China Evergrande were halted on Hong Kong’s inventory alternate on Monday, pending an unspecified deal, as doubts swirled over whether or not the struggling property large would be capable of meet its enormous monetary obligations.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acknowledged that the “Covid zero” goal of eliminating the coronavirus in New Zealand could be dropped and that restrictions could be steadily lifted in Auckland.

Her announcement on Monday got here seven weeks right into a lockdown that has didn’t halt an outbreak of the Delta variant. The transfer marked the top to the aggressive technique the nation has pursued for a 12 months and a half, closing borders and rapidly imposing lockdowns over even just a few instances to maintain the virus in test.

Early within the pandemic, New Zealand received reward for its strategy, nevertheless it has change into much less tenable with the extremely contagious Delta variant. Now, Ardern mentioned, New Zealand will work to attain widespread vaccination.

Auckland: New Zealand continues to be reporting dozens of latest instances a day, nearly all of them in Auckland, its greatest metropolis, after the newest outbreak started in mid-August. The temper there has soured as a lockdown stretched on.

Quotable: “For this outbreak, it’s clear that lengthy durations of heavy restrictions has not obtained us to zero instances,” Ardern mentioned. “What we now have known as a protracted tail,” she added, “feels extra like a tentacle that has been extremely onerous to shake.”

Listed below are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In different developments:

The police are investigating whether or not the son of certainly one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ministers was in a vehicle that slammed into protesters on Sunday, killing 4 farmers and 4 others.

The almost yearlong demonstrations towards a authorities revamping of India’s agriculture legal guidelines threaten to enter a extra risky section. Protest leaders mentioned a car in Uttar Pradesh plowed into demonstrators as a part of a convoy touring previous the positioning.

Ashish Mishra, the son of Ajay Kumar Mishra, India’s minister of state for dwelling affairs, instructed Indian TV information channels on Monday that the allegations towards him have been “baseless.”

The incident drew additional consideration after the Uttar Pradesh police detained Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a pacesetter of India’s principal opposition Congress occasion and the great-granddaughter of India’s first prime minister.

Asia Pacific

In the course of the coronavirus pandemic, residents of Venice discovered that the lower in tourism made their metropolis really feel extra like dwelling. Officers are attempting to maintain it that approach, however a few of their plans — shopping for the cellphone knowledge of unwitting guests, utilizing surveillance cameras, putting in gates at key entry factors — have Venetians frightened they are going to live in a dystopian museum.

Would you get a grasp’s diploma within the Beatles? Within the band’s hometown, a postgraduate program aims to turn fans into students of the Fab 4’s legacy by finding out their sociological, historic and financial influence.

As a brand new semester started final week on the College of Liverpool, 11 keen college students, ages 21 to 67, trooped into class to start out this system. One wore a Yoko Ono T-shirt, whereas one other had a yellow submarine tattooed on his arm, Alex Marshall writes in The Occasions. Two had named their sons Jude, after one of the band’s most famous songs.

Teachers have studied the Beatles for many years, and the band is massive enterprise regionally: Liverpool’s affiliation with the band was value over $110 million a 12 months, a 2014 examine discovered. Vacationers go to websites named within the band’s songs and venues the place the group performed.

Two skilled tour guides within the course mentioned they hoped this system would assist them appeal to prospects. “The tour trade in Liverpool is fierce,” one mentioned.

One pupil, Alexandra Mason, lately accomplished a legislation diploma however determined to vary monitor when she heard in regards to the Beatles course. “I by no means actually needed to be a lawyer,” she mentioned. “In my thoughts, I’ve gone from the ridiculous to the chic.”

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