BEIJING (Dispatches) –U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for vigorous competition with arch-foe China to preserve the existing global order but hastened to add that Washington did not seek a “Cold War.” In a speech at George Washington University, the top U.S. diplomat outlined the Biden administration’s approach as “invest, align, compete”, dubbing Beijing as the “most serious long-term challenge to the international order”, despite recent focus on the war in Ukraine.  “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order -- and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” Blinken said. He emphasized that China remains the Biden administration’s top priority despite the support and aid the U.S. is providing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

 

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MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) -The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Croatian ambassador in Moscow on Friday, expressed a strong protest to him and declared five employees of the Croatian embassy in Moscow personae non gratae in response to the steps taken earlier by Zagreb. “On May 27, the Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia to the Russian Federation, Tomislav Car, was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a strong protest was expressed to him in connection with the groundless attempts of the Croatian authorities to blame Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and the provision of military assistance by the Croatian side to the neo-Nazi Kiev regime,” the statement says.

 

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TIVAOUANE, Senegal (AP) — Police were on guard and nearby residents and parents stood mourning outside a hospital in Senegal where a fire in the neonatal unit killed 11 newborns. Only three infants could be saved, President Macky Sall said before calling on Thursday for three days of mourning for the young lives lost. Mamadou Mbaye, who witnessed the fire Wednesday at the Abdoul Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in Tivaouane, a town 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of the capital, Dakar, told The Associated Press that conditions inside the hospital were “atrocious.”

 

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DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — At a small plaza in Davos, a picturesque Swiss town in the middle of the Alps, about 50 climate activists gathered on Thursday to bring attention to issues they said were largely ignored during this week’s World Economic Forum meeting. They said more attention needed to be on human suffering, particularly in developing countries experiencing severe weather events like heat waves and floods. They said there was no talk at all of reparations, often referred to as “loss and damage,” for poor countries that have contributed little to global warming but are experiencing some of the worst effects. And finally, they said the calls for a transition to renewables were hollow, as they were not joined by talk of plans to phase out fossil fuels.

 

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CALIFORNIA (Reuters) - The extended drought in California could lead to hydropower producing 8% of California’s electricity generation compared with 15% under normal precipitation conditions, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said. In its supplemental outlook, the EIA expects that the dip in hydropower generation would lead to an 8% increase in electricity generation from natural gas, an increase in energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 6%, and a roughly 5% increase in wholesale electricity prices throughout the West, it said in a press release.

 

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PARIS (AFP) - Deadly attacks attributed to takffiris against civilians and the military have multiplied in recent weeks in Burkina Faso, the latest of which left some 50 civilians dead in the east. This attack, carried out on Wednesday against the commune of Madjoari, which has between 15 and 20,000 inhabitants, but announced on Thursday, is the bloodiest since the one perpetrated nearly a year ago in Solhan, in the northeast, which killed 132 people. “Residents of Madjoari”, a locality under blockade by terrorists and who were trying to leave it, “were targeted” near a bridge “by unidentified armed individuals”, said Colonel Hubert Yameogo, governor of the eastern region, in a statement sent to AFP. “The provisional death toll is “around 50 people killed”, he said.