TOP NEWS

The China-Russia relationship
After record trading - Putin is said to be traveling to Beijing

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to travel to China in mid-May to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a source close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg. It would be Putin's first visit abroad during the new mandate that begins next week.

According to the news agency, he might want to discuss how the already strong trade between the countries can be further strengthened. It grew to a record level last year but Chinese exports are said to have fallen by 16 percent in March compared to the same month in 2023.

China has not expressed support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but their economic ties are considered to have reduced the importance of Western countries' sanctions.

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The US-Japan relationship
Mild criticism from Japan against Biden: "Unfortunate"

US President Joe Biden's comment that Japan is xenophobic will not affect the relationship between the countries, writes the Japanese embassy in Washington in a statement according to Forbes.

The embassy believes that it was "unfortunate" that Biden showed a lack of understanding of Japanese politics, but further writes that it was said in a reasoning that went on to describe the United States as a country for immigrants.

China, Russia and India were also mentioned in Biden's presentation.

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Demands in Parliament: No cooperation with Meloni

Both within the EU Parliament's liberal and social democratic party groups, demands are made to renounce cooperation with SD's European party family ECR. This is reported by TT.

Right now, the ECR is dominated by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party and Poland's former ruling Law and Justice party. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has not ruled out cooperation with the group, but also pointed out that it depends on which parties will be part of it after the election.

- A coalition deal with the ECR [...] is completely out of the question, says French liberal top candidate Valérie Hayer in an interview with the European news agency cooperation ENR.