City Washington Financial News

By Nandita Bose

By Steve Holland, Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt

Taiwan elections 2024: Lai Ching-te, candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP), won the Taiwan election held on Saturday, January 13. Both China and the United States reacted sharply to the latest polls as the DPP secured unprecedented third consecutive term in the nation. Taiwan's election took place at a time of growing geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Sweden's government and military urging Swedes to be ready for war has triggered panicked buying, frightened children and a fierce debate in the Nordic country. While Sweden has contributed troops to international peacekeeping missions, the country has not been directly involved in an armed conflict since the Napoleonic era. The realities of war are therefore foreign to most Swedes. «There could be war in Sweden,» Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin told an annual defence conference on Sunday, warning Swedes against complacency. Days later, the sentiment was echoed by the commander of Sweden's armed forces Micael Byden, who showed pictures of burnt out and bombed houses from Ukraine. «Do you believe that this could be Sweden?,» Byden asked the audience, later explaining that the question was not a rhetorical one. "Russia's war against Ukraine is a step, not an end goal, for the ambition to establish spheres of influence and tear down the rule-based world order," he added. Ending two centuries of neutrality and military non-alignment, Sweden applied to join NATO in May 2022, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though its bid is currently held up by Turkey and Hungary. In early December, Stockholm and Washington signed a pact paving the way for US forces to operate in Sweden. Byden then went on to say that Swedes needed to «mentally prepare for war.» — Anxious children - The statements were widely spread by news outlets and social media. Subsequently, children's rights group Bris said it had seen a noticeable uptick in calls to its support hotline from children worried about the prospect of an impending war. «Many children already have a level of anxiety that was made worse by this news,»

The Biden administration is awarding $623 million in grants to help build an electric vehicle charging network across the nation

Microsoft says it is upgrading its cloud computing service to let customers store all personal data within the European Union instead of having it flow to the U.S. where national privacy laws don’t exist

Iran’s navy has seized an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman that once was at the center of a major crisis between Tehran and Washington, a seizure that further escalates tensions in the Mideast waterways

Beijing will «never compromise» on the issue of Taiwan and urged them to stop «provocative actions» in the South China Sea, the defence ministry said Wednesday. China «stressed that it will never compromise or back down on the Taiwan issue,» the ministry said in a readout of the talks in Washington, held Monday and Tuesday, urging the United States to «stop arming» the self-ruled island, which is holding elections this week.

By Andrew Goudsward and John Kruzel

Virginia lawmakers are set to take up legislation to enable Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's plan to build a new professional sports arena and entertainment district in Alexandria

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday (7 January) that the sanctions were 'in response to these gravely wrong actions taken by the US', although they did not name the recent aid package specifically.

By Kanishka Singh and Richard Cowan

By David Shepardson

President Joe Biden's administration is providing $162 million to Arizona high-tech manufacturer Microchip Technology to support the domestic production of computer chips

A top federal transportation safety official is harshly criticizing Washington's regional transit agency, saying a “poor safety culture” led to an October 2021 derailment that caused hundreds of new Metro railcars to be pulled from service

The U.S. Treasury has announced that the nation’s gross national debt has surpassed $34 trillion

By David Lawder

It was a tumultuous 2023 for the Chinese economy

defence synergy and trade links in 2024 and remain steadfast in securing a free and open Indo-Pacific region. In a statement issued on Thursday, Mukesh Aghi, the President and CEO of the US-India Partnership Forum (USISPF) also said that as the world moves into 2024, now the fastest-growing major economy and the most populous nation in the world has a «bolder vision.

By John Shiffman and Joshua Schneyer

iPhones, a Washington Post report said recently. The move comes after several Opposition leaders and some journalists in October claimed that they had received emails from Apple warning them that state-sponsored attackers were potentially remotely trying to compromise the iPhones associated with their IDs.