Package includes medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones, and has drawn an angry response from China
The Trump administration has announced a massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10bn that includes medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones, drawing an angry response from China.
The state department announced the sales late on Wednesday during a nationally televised address by president Donald Trump, who made scant mention of foreign policy issues and did not speak about China or Taiwan at all. US-Chinese tensions have ebbed and flowed during Trump’s second term, largely over trade and tariffs but also over China’s increasing aggressiveness toward Taiwan, which Beijing has said must unify with the People’s Republic of China.
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© Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
It is clear that the FCC is not an independent agency, but an instrument of the president’s political agenda
The Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, admitted at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that there had been a political “sea change” and he no longer viewed the FCC as an independent agency. Commissioners, he says, serve at the pleasure of the president.
In his case, that president is Donald Trump, whose face Carr wears as a lapel pin, whose agenda he loudly embraces, and who often publicly demands that Carr censor his critics, including revoking their broadcast licenses.
Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation and a first amendment lawyer. Clayton Weimers is the executive director of RSF USA, the North American branch of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
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© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
The no-nonsense comic actor and author further cements her status as a national treasure with her trademark gobby one-liners
A lot of terrible things happen to Kathy Burke in her memoir, though you won’t find her mired in self-pity. Burke was a toddler when her mother died from stomach cancer, meaning she has no memory of her. In the Islington council flat where she grew up, she shared a bedroom with her alcoholic dad who would give up booze only to fall off the wagon and, at his worst, became violent. When a stranger on the estate called her ugly in front of her friends, she cannily deflected the insult with laughter. “I’m the best dancer at the ugly bug ball though,” she hooted, and did a little dance.
Burke would find her tribe on London’s punk scene and, in her teens, got the acting bug and a place at London’s Anna Scher Theatre school. This put her on the path to a brilliant and varied acting and writing career that saw her appearing in comedy sketches with Harry Enfield and French and Saunders, being called a genius by Peter Cook and taken by Luc Besson’s private jet to collect the prize for best actress at Cannes film festival for Gary Oldman’s 1997 film Nil By Mouth. There, much to her chagrin, she found herself “accepting a bellini cocktail from Harvey fuckface Weinstein”.
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© Photograph: Lee Strickland/The Observer
© Photograph: Lee Strickland/The Observer
© Photograph: Lee Strickland/The Observer
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