The US Senate on Friday confirmed Utah Governor Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China, giving the Republican the task of nurturing a sometimes shaky relationship that US President Barack Obama sees as crucial to solving many of the world’s most difficult crises.
The Senate also confirmed John Roos, a lawyer and Obama campaign fundraiser, as US ambassador to Japan. Both were confirmed by unanimous consent.
Huntsman’s confirmation sends to Beijing a fluent Chinese speaker with deep social, government and business ties to the region. It also allows Obama to bring into his administration a popular Republican leader seen as a potential challenger for the presidency in 2012.
Huntsman will travel to China at a time of rising cooperation between the two huge economies. Late last month, the countries held two days of high-level talks in Washington. Officials vowed to work together to deal with global economic turmoil, climate change and nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran.
But it is also a relationship beset by tension and occasional hostility. The US has repeatedly criticized China’s treatment of its people, most recently its crackdown on ethnic riots in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, its massive, opaque military buildup and its trade and economic practices.
China, the world’s largest holder of US Treasury securities, worries about the safety of its investments. Beijing also cut off military talks with Washington after the administration of former US president George W. Bush last year approved a huge weapons sale to Taiwan.
US lawmakers from both political parties have praised Huntsman as the right person for an important job. He is a former ambassador to Singapore, has led trade missions to China and has two adopted daughters, one from China and one from India. Huntsman lived in Taiwan as a young man, working as a Mormon missionary.
Obama’s nominee for Japan, Roos, reportedly collected at least US$500,000 for Obama’s presidential campaign. But he was relatively unknown outside fundraising and legal circles when Obama picked him as envoy to Tokyo, and his pick drew criticism from some in Japan.
Earlier, at his Senate confirmation hearing, prominent Americans, including former Senator Bill Bradley and Walter Mondale, former US vice president and ambassador to Japan, spoke of what they saw as Roos’ qualifications, in both experience and temperament, to be ambassador.
Obama also gave Roos a strong vote of confidence on Thursday, saying that he “will be able to advise me directly” on US-Japan issues.
“I placed great importance in the selection of who would represent the United States as ambassador to Japan,” Obama told reporters, Roos sitting at his side. “And after careful consideration I made the determination that the person who I thought could best do this is somebody with superb judgment, somebody with an outstanding intellect, somebody who is a very close friend of mine and a close adviser.”
Roos has said that the large California law firm he leads was “intimately involved” with several topics of interest to Japan, including software growth, the rise of the Internet, the emergence of biotechnology and clean technology and renewable energy.
The Senate also confirmed a host of other appointments, including Carlos Pascual to be ambassador to Mexico and Aaron Williams to be director of the Peace Corps.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS