Facing criticism, Tim Ryan defends anti-China ad in Ohio Senate race
WASHINGTON — Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan is not backing down as he faces blowback from some in his party for an ad in his Senate campaign that repeatedly blames China for workers’ economic woes.
“It is us versus China,” Ryan says in the one-minute montage of his speeches, many at union halls and to audiences wearing blue-collar uniforms. “And instead of taking them on, Washington is wasting our time on stupid fights.”
The ad, part of a $3.3 million campaign running across the state, attracted immediate backlash from Democratic groups promoting Asian-American issues. New York Rep. Grace Meng, the vice chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, called on Ryan to stop airing it. Shekar Narasimhan, the chairman of AAPI Victory Fund, a super PAC that supports Asian American and Pacific Islander candidates, likened it to tactics inciting “hate” and “fear” used by Republicans emulating former President Donald Trump.
“Rep. Tim Ryan’s ad for his Ohio Senate campaign stirs up a racist pedagogy vis-a-vis China and makes Americans of East Asian descent vulnerable to attacks,” Narasimhan said in a statement posted on Twitter.
—CQ-Roll Call
Elon Musk buys 9% stake in Twitter, becomes largest shareholder
Just weeks after publicly questioning whether Twitter holds up free speech, Elon Musk has dropped nearly $3 billion to become its largest stakeholder.
The Tesla CEO has purchased a 9.2% stake in the social media company, more than quadruple the position of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released Monday.
Based on Twitter’s closing price Friday, Musk’s newly acquired 73,486,938 shares are worth $2.89 billion.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur hasn’t publicly commented on his purchase, but it comes as he has seemingly grown more upset with how Twitter is doing business.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he tweeted alongside a poll on March 25. “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”
Of more than 2 million votes, 70.4% of respondents said “no.”
—New York Daily News
Day before murdering wife at Miami Jewish center, man stabbed her. He was not arrested
MIAMI — The man who fatally shot his wife at a Jewish community center pool in Northweast Miami-Dade on Sunday had stabbed the woman one day before, according to an arrest report released Monday.
Carl Monty Watts Jr., 45, has now been jailed and is awaiting a charge of second-degree murder with a weapon and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The slain woman, Shandell Harris, had reported the Saturday stabbing to Miami police. Her injuries were not serious enough for her to be admitted to the hospital, law enforcement sources told The Miami Herald.
It was not immediately clear why officers had not arrested Watts.
By Sunday afternoon, Harris was with her daughter at swim lessons at at the pool at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center when Watts approached. According to an arrest report from Miami-Dade County Police, he began “offering the victim money to drop the charges against him.” She refused and asked him to leave.
Watts then took out a firearm and began shooting her in front of horrified children and parents. When she collapsed, Watts “stood over the victim and continued to shoot her until he ran out of live cartridges,” the report said.
—Miami Herald
China promotes traditional cures as Pfizer pill alternatives
As Hong Kong’s outbreak became the deadliest in the world, among the aid Beijing sent to the financial hub were 1 million packets of honeysuckle, rhubarb root, sweet wormwood herb and other natural ingredients, all mixed according to principles of traditional Chinese medicine.
Practitioners of the centuries-old medicinal system argue such herbal combinations can be just as effective as antiviral pills like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid.
“Unlike Western medicine that targets the virus itself, the way TCM works against COVID is to first effect change in the environment of our human body,” said Liu Qingquan, dean of Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. “Once the environment changes, the virus can no longer survive.”
President Xi Jinping wants other countries to give China’s herbal cures a chance. His government is promoting TCM to allies worldwide, sending traditional medicine specialists to Cambodia and supporting clinical trials in Pakistan, both countries that rely heavily on Chinese aid.
Russia in 2020 allowed pharmacies to sell Lianhua Qingwen, one of the most popular types of TCM used to treat COVID-19 patients, and the government of another authoritarian leader, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, agreed last year to establish a center to produce TCM near Minsk.
—Bloomberg News
