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• Turkey could play an influential role in the International Lunar Research Station, says space analyst

• Its national space programme includes building sophisticated satellites and space launch capability and aims to make a hard landing on lunar surface in 2026 ⠀

It aligned with the country’s recent achievements in space, including astronaut Alper Gezeravci’s trip to the International Space Station as part of the Ax-3 commercial human space flight mission ⠀

John Sheldon, co-founding managing partner of the London-based space consulting company AstroAnalytica, said he was not surprised Turkey was interested in joining the ILRS initiative.

Turkish involvement would benefit China given its space ambitions and programmes, with the implication of potential budget and technological contributions, he said on Wednesday. ⠀

The move would also serve Ankara’s geopolitical goals, he said, as its foreign policy was going through a significant transition from being a Western-oriented country to looking increasingly towards the east and south. ⠀

If Turkey’s application is accepted, it would be the 10th nation member of the China and Russian-led moon base project, following Venezuela, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, South Africa, Egypt and Thailand.

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• The law requires colleges and universities to get approval before hiring or working with Chinese people who aren’t US citizens or green card holders

• A legal challenge filed by two graduate students and a professor argues, among other things, that the state law usurps the power of the federal government

Last year, with an eye to curb Chinese influence in the state, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill requiring state colleges and universities to get government approval before they hire or work with Chinese people who aren’t US citizens or green card holders.

Since then, schools in the state have scrambled to comply. In December, Miami-based Florida International University paused the hiring of Chinese and citizens of six other “countries of concern” also targeted by the law – Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela – while waiting for the state university system’s board of governors to create a vetting process. ⠀

“Requiring the board of governors’ approval means it is next to impossible to obtain approval,” said Sumi Helal, a professor of computer and information science and engineering at the University of Florida.

Helal said he was “intent on leaving” the school. ⠀

Last year, DeSantis said his anti-Chinese influence efforts provided a “blueprint for other states to do the same”.

And according to political observers in the state, the governor may double down on his education policies. David McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said that “being an education ‘culture warrior’” was a “perceived strength of his when conservative activists helped push critical race theory and anti-trans rhetoric and policies onto the political agenda”. ⠀

“Our academic community thrives on international collaboration. SB 846 is a malicious and xenophobic bill that directly attacks our community,” said Eva Garcia Ferres, co-president of Graduate Assistants United at the University of Florida.

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Israel’s current right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood. ⠀

United States said relations between Israel and the Palestinians are far from ripe. That all but quashes the Palestinian Authority's U.N. membership hopes for now.

The U.S. is one of five permanent members who can veto any council action. Members of its U.N. delegation reiterated Monday that the Palestinian Authority needs to exert control over all of the Palestinian territories and negotiate statehood with Israel before it wins statehood.

The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Its forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas seized power in 2007, and it has no power there.

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• Xi Jinping tells Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Beijing is prepared to step up coordination with Moscow through BRICS and the SCO

• Lavrov hits out at the West over ‘illegal sanctions’ and ‘military and political unions’ against Russia and China ⠀

In a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was willing to increase strategic coordination with Russia within multilateral frameworks to “promote reform” in the global system. ⠀

Some Chinese companies have already been sanctioned by the European Union for allegedly circumventing the bloc’s sanctions on Russia, prompting strong opposition from Beijing.

Calling relations with China at an “unprecedentedly high level”, Lavrov vowed to increase coordination with China within BRICS and the SCO, including to solve sanctions-related issues.

Both countries will also launch talks on Eurasian security and continue cooperation on anti-terrorism, according to Lavrov.

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The country’s trade ministry said on Tuesday that it would curb exports of 54 goods, including metals products, fuels and oils, and construction machinery, a day after Turkey’s foreign minister accused Israel of impeding attempts to airlift aid to “starving Gazans”. ⠀

Turkey exported $5.4bn of goods to Israel last year, making the Jewish state one of the country’s top-15 export destinations. Turkey was Israel’s fifth-biggest import partner, according to customs database Trade Data Monitor. ⠀

Turkey did not provide details on how it would carry out its ban, making it difficult to calculate the exact impact of the curbs. Metals and metal products were among Turkey’s biggest exports to Israel last year, accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in trade.

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Alan Estavez, US undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, will meet with officials and ASML executives in the Netherlands on Monday and raise the servicing contract matter with them, according to a Reuters report.

The report also says the Biden administration may ask ASML to stop selling equipment to a new list of Chinese chip-making factories.

Since last year Washington has been pushing the Dutch government to restrict the maintenance services that are provided by ASML to Chinese customers.

Recent public statements made by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration suggest that the Netherlands will be slow to approve Chinese maintenance requests in the future and quick to deny them, Reuters reported. ⠀

From January 1 this year, the Dutch government stopped granting licenses for the shipment to China of ASML’s most advanced DUV immersion lithography systems (NXT: 2000i, NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i and subsequent systems).

Caijing.com reported last November that there were fewer than five ASML systems in China as advanced as NXT:2000i. The report said the total number of units of the NXT:1980Di, which is not subject to the US export ban, should be below 80 in China. ⠀

The Chinese Embassy in Washington complained that the US is overstretching the concept of national security and using pretexts to coerce other countries into joining its technological blockade against China. ⠀

In a two-hour phone call on April 2, Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden that China is “not going to sit back and watch” if the US continues to suppress China’s trade and technology development and add more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists.

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The People’s Bank of China is devising a program to provide as much as 500 billion yuan (US$69 billion) to support innovation in science and technology.

It’s a “relending” scheme, meaning that the PBOC will extend credit to select institutions that lend funds to targeted sectors in need of monetary support. Having unveiled the enterprise on April 7, during US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing, the Communist Party is demonstrating why Washington’s hopes for massive reflationary stimulus seem unlikely to happen. ⠀

Some believe the PBOC must learn from Japan’s mistakes in the 1990s and print yuan aggressively to head off deflation. Others think structural reforms to fix China’s property crisis, strengthen capital markets and address record youth unemployment are far more urgent.

But President Xi Jinping’s team appears to favor a third way – hyper-targeted liquidity infusions coupled with efforts to shift growth engines towards tech-driven future industries that increase disruption and productivity – and, in this case, aimed directly where the PBOC’s liquidity might play a key role in driving China upmarket. ⠀

Yellen made a point of shouting out Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 visit to manufacturing and export powerhouse Guangzhou. It marked a key milestone in China’s progress in becoming a market economy, one that Yellen hopes the Xi era will emulate by leveling playing fields for Western companies. ⠀

She added that many corporate CEOs worry about “the impacts of China’s shift away from a market approach.” ⠀

Yet so much of Yellen’s pitch in recent days has been prodding China to shift stimulus efforts into higher gear. And there’s a lost-in-time element to Washington’s latest pleadings.

Yellen’s comments echo those Washington directed at Japan in the mid-to-late 1990s.

What Yellen is advocating is a strategy that Japan has been pursuing for 25-plus years with mediocre success. Opening the fiscal and monetary floodgates year after year surely propped up gross domestic product here and there. But without bold supply-side reforms, all Tokyo did was address the symptoms of the weak demand behind its multi-decade funk.

Today, Japan faces by far the largest debt burden among developed nations — roughly 260% of GDP. The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, has kept interest either near zero, or below, since 1999. Six years ago, the BOJ’s balance sheet even topped the size of its US$4.7 trillion economy, a first for a Group of Seven economy. ⠀

China must avoid this formula for economic mediocrity, no matter how much flack Xi’s inner circle gets from Yellen & Co. Judging from the events of the last two months, Beijing is indeed picking up the pace in that direction.

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China has sharply ramped up its production of cheap electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries just as the Biden administration has pushed through legislation supporting many of those same industries in the United States. ⠀

Chinese automaker BYD had recently introduced an electric SUV at the "astonishingly low" price of $14,000. China's auto industry poses an "existential threat" to U.S. carmakers, the report argued. ⠀

After more than a decade of subsidizing its automakers, China has built a substantial car industry that accounts for 60% of global electric vehicle sales, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. ⠀

Yellen highlighted the Biden administration's concerns by recalling a visit a week earlier to Suniva, a solar cell manufacturer in Norcross, Georgia.

The company "was once forced to close down, like other companies across a number of industries, because it could not compete against large quantities of goods that China was exporting at artificially depressed prices," Yellen said. ⠀

China hasn't committed to any steps to address American concerns, arguing that its cheap solar panels and other green products are helping the world wage the costly battle against climate change.

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• Taipei views conflict in Middle East as opportunity to learn from Israel’s defence strategy and foster friendly relations

• While Beijing is still important economically, Israel is looking for partners in Asia that offer ‘less ideological criticism’, analyst says ⠀

Lee said that in the wake of the Hamas attack, Taiwan has shown it is a “reliable partner” to Israel. ⠀

Taiwan’s desire for warmer ties with Israel began long before the October 7 attack. Bilateral trade between the two has grown steadily in recent years, rising to over US$3.2 billion in 2022 from US$2.4 billion the previous year.

Taiwanese media and officials often speak with admiration for Israel’s strong military and make comparisons between Taiwan and Israel as two isolated democracies with strong tech sectors.

Taiwan has expressed more interest in “track-two” defence cooperation, referring to non-governmental or unofficial cooperation, and is interested in learning from Israel’s civil defence and reserve system.

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