Wendy Sherman’s likely agenda in India

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman is set to have a packed agenda during her visit to India, which will pave the way for the India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF) and the maiden 2+2 ministerial dialogue under the Joe Biden administration.

Sherman is visiting India from 6 to 7 October and will be reaching New Delhi from Tashkent. She will be meeting government officials, representatives from civil societies and will also visit Mumbai on October 07 to meet the business community.

Sherman is expected to set the tone for the upcoming 2+2 talks between the Foreign and Defence ministers of both countries, which is likely to take place in November.

The India-US TPF was established in 2005 with the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in India as nodal agencies.

Under the previous US administration, headed by President Donald Trump, the TPF met only once in October 2017 when the then US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met India’s former Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu.

However, after this meeting, President Trump called off the talks and began negotiations for a limited trade deal between India and the US as an answer to a plethora of trade issues between both the countries.

These issues range from lowering of tariffs for American goods, especially agricultural produce, to increase in tariffs on IT products by India.

However, despite a series of negotiations between both the sides, the plan to have a small trade deal, followed by a larger one, could not be clinched.

According to the sources, the Biden administration is not yet keen to have a trade deal with India since it plans to smoothen out “trade irritants” first, under the TPF.

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last week, India made sure to put trade back on the table as the government eyes large trade deals in its second term, unlike the first one.

“Between India and the United States, trade will continue to assume importance, and we find that the trade between our two countries is actually complementary,” Modi said in Washington last week, addressing a joint press conference with US President Joe Biden.

The issue of enhancing two-way trade also came up during the meetings Foreign Secretary Harsh V. Shringla had with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sherman.

The 2+2 dialogue between the US and India will take place in Washington this time, for which External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit the US.

This is going to be the first 2+2 level talks between both sides under the Biden administration.

According to sources, during this meet, both sides will discuss the roadmap for Afghanistan that is now being ruled by the Taliban.

They added that the discussions will range from extending humanitarian aid to the Afghan people, support for Afghan women and children and also on the remainder of the evacuation exercise in the country.

Discussions will also be held on the role both countries will be playing in Afghanistan, in terms of whether or not to grant international legitimacy to the Taliban while making them adhere to the UN Resolution 2593 (2021), which was passed under India’s UNSC presidency in August.

The resolution demanded that the territory of Afghanistan not be used for terrorist activities or as a safe haven particularly for groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Newly elected Japanese Prime Minister mesmerized by US mantra

Newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed skepticism about China's qualification to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) at his first press conference on Monday, noting the bloc's tough free trade requirements.

As regards China's application to join the CPTPP, he said, "we need to look at whether China can meet the high standards required by the trade pact." "It's still unclear if it can," he added.

Kishida noted that China was using force to shift the status quo in the region. "It is important to say what we need to say to China in coordination with allies and partners with whom we share fundamental values," he said.

US President Joe Biden on Monday congratulated Kishida on his election. "The US-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and the world, and I look forward to working closely with Prime Minister Kishida to strengthen our cooperation in the months and years ahead," he said.

Kishida will speak with Biden over the phone as early as Tuesday, in what is expected to be his first conversation with a global leader since taking office. They will affirm the importance of the Japan-US alliance and exchange ideas on ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific. The leaders are also expected to discuss national security concerns in light of recent developments, including China.

On foreign policy, Kishida laid out three principles: 1) protecting universal values such as freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law; 2) strengthening Japan's defense; and 3) taking the lead in tackling global issues such as climate change and the free flow of data.

On strengthening Japan's security, the Prime Minister specifically mentioned missile defense. "To defend our territory, seas, airspace, as well as the lives and assets of our people, I am determined to strengthen the defense of Japan, including missile defense, and bolster maritime security capabilities," he said.

The reference to missile deterrence is seen as a nod to the upcoming two-plus-two security negotiations with the US Secretaries of State and Defense, during which the US is expected to propose basing intermediate-range missiles in Japan to deter Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait.

"I will engage in foreign policy and national security challenges with resolve, drawing on the Japan-US alliance and the world's trust in Japan," Kishida said.

Kishida also said he is prepared to meet North Korean leader without preconditions. He called the resolution of the abduction issue ‑ the North's kidnapping of Japanese in the 1970s and '80s ‑ a top priority of the government.

On economic policy, Kishida promised that his cabinet will work together to distribute wealth widely among the people.

"I aim to create a new form of capitalism, and present a new socioeconomic vision to pave the way for Japan's future," he said.

The leader said he will set up a new team to lay out a post-pandemic social and economic vision for Japan. "We will create a positive cycle of growth and distribution to create an economy where people can prosper," he pledged.

Kishida said the government should consider tax reform, in particular changing the current rules that grant lower effective tax rates to those earning 100 million yen (US$900,000) or more.

He also listed a slew of other policies to foster economic growth, including promoting technological advancements, narrowing income gaps between urban and nonurban areas through digitization, protecting Japan's economic security and creating social welfare and tax systems that are fair to all work styles.

Kishida said he will dissolve the lower house on October 14 for an election on October 31, seeking a fresh popular mandate as he takes the country's reins.

"I want the Japanese people to decide before anything else whether they believe in me, and, if possible, to tap that confidence to advance a politics of trust and compassion," he said.

"I set the timeline in hopes of tackling daring coronavirus and economic measures with the public's support," Kishida said. Slowing case numbers in Japan contributed to his decision.

Regarding the Group of 20 Summit and the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Summit, which are scheduled around the time of the election, Kishida said he will be able to take part in discussions through remote and other technologies. "I hope to make Japan's presence felt," he said.

Need to find out reasons for downing of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp

Users have begun reporting Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp returned to function after going offline for users across the globe on Monday and remaining down for nearly six hours. Some users are still experiencing difficulties writing or uploading new posts or stories, but their feed has reloaded.

Downdetector that tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, said that they saw almost 14 million total reports for Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger said, "We are starting to see reports begin to decline now that Facebook is back up."

Facebook apologized but did not immediately explain what caused the failure. The firm owns Instagram and WhatsApp.

As the world flocked to competing apps such as Twitter and TikTok, shares of Facebook fell 4.9%, their biggest daily drop since last November, amid a broader selloff in technology stocks on Monday. Shares rose about half a percent in after-hours trade following resumption of service.

"To every small and large business, family, and individual who depends on us, I'm sorry," Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer tweeted, adding that it "may take some time to get to 100%."

Several Facebook employees who declined to be named said that they believed that the outage was caused by an internal mistake in how internet traffic is routed to its systems. The failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same network in order to work compounded the error, the employees said.

Security experts said an inadvertent mistake or sabotage by an insider were both plausible.

"Facebook basically locked its keys in its car," tweeted Jonathan Zittrain, Director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

As the company was struggling to resume connection, Schroepfer said in a tweet, "We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore." He also apologized sincerely to everyone "impacted by outages."

During the crisis, Facebook workers also reported issues with using their company phones and equipment, and some have even been locked out of the building when their digital cards failed to function, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Other platforms such as Amazon and Telegram have been experiencing difficulties ever since the Facebook shutdown as well, possibly as many users turned to these alternative platforms instead of Facebook, and overloaded their systems.

The severe outage comes immediately after a whistleblower accused Facebook of repeatedly prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation on Sunday. 

"Strange that hours after a whistleblower calls out Facebook saying they engaged in a 'betrayal of democracy' that Facebook and other companies it owns are totally down." Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Monday. "I'm sure it's a coincidence."

#Facebookdown and Whatsapp have become trending on Twitter as the world experienced several hours with only one large active social media platform out of the top four used in Israel, Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter became the hottest arena for the hours when Facebook was off the grid, and started a thread reading, "hello literally everyone." Many industrial giants responded to the tweet, including McDonalds, Microsoft Teams, Alexa, and the culprits themselves, Whatsapp, Instagram and Real Mark Zuckerberg, who tweeted, "Am also here literally. Lol," and assured the fanbase that he was working on the app issues.

Security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

An outside hack was viewed as less likely. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world's most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.

Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or how many were affected by the outage.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience," Facebook said.

Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.

Several users using their Facebook credentials to log in to third-party apps such as Pokemon Go and Match Masters also faced issues.

"If your game isn't running as usual please note that there's been an issue with Facebook login servers and the moment this gets fixed all will be back to normal," puzzle game app Match Masters said on its Twitter account.

Commencement of commercial flights between Egypt and Israel

An Egyptair aircraft landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday in the airline’s first-ever commercial flight to Israel. The Egyptian national carrier will now run four weekly round-trip commercial flights between Tel Aviv and Cairo. 

Sunday’s flight was greeted with the traditional water sprays shot in the air in celebration of the historic event.

Since Israel and Egypt signed a peace deal in 1979, flights between the two countries have been offered by a subsidiary of Egyptair, called Air Sinai, created exclusively for that purpose. Those flights ran with varying frequencies between the two countries, depending on diplomatic conditions, and never showed the company’s logo on the plane.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh three weeks ago in the first visit of an Israeli prime minister to Egypt in a decade. Sisi felt comfortable at the time announcing the meeting publicly, whereas in the past, only Israel would publicize such high-level diplomatic events.

The flight followed another “historic first” flight last week, a direct commercial flight to Israel from Bahrain, kicking off Gulf Air’s new biweekly route between Ben-Gurion and Manama, Bahrain’s capital city.

Flights between Israel and Dubai began last November, and a direct route to Abu Dhabi launched in April. In July, El Al and Israir both launched their first flights to Marrakesh, Morocco, following the normalization of ties in December.

Israel has had peace with Egypt since 1979, but while Cairo has remained an important strategic partner throughout, the relationship has had hot and cold periods.

Last month the Taba border crossing between Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula returned to full activity after Israel’s National Security Council lowered the travel alert level of beaches there. Travel to Sinai, a popular tourist destination for Israelis, was severely restricted during the past year due to the corona pandemic.

Wendy Sherman could prove tough bargainer for Pakistan

Wendy Ruth Sherman (born June 7, 1949) is an American professor and diplomat serving as the United States Deputy Secretary of State since April 2021. She is a professor of public leadership and Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School a senior counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Sherman, a social worker, served as the director of EMILY's list, the director of Maryland's office of child welfare, and the founding president of the Fannie Mae Foundation. During the Clinton administration, she served as Counselor of the United States Department of State from 1997 to 2001. She was also a Special Advisor to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and North Korea Policy Coordinator. In the latter role, she was instrumental in negotiations related to North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

She served under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2011 to 2015. She was the fourth-ranking official in the US Department of State. In that role, Sherman was the lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal. On January 16, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden formally announced Sherman to serve as United States Deputy Secretary of State under Antony Blinken. On March 11, 2021, her nomination was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Her nomination was approved by the full Senate on April 13, 2021, by a vote of 56 to 42. She is the first woman to hold the position. She was sworn into office on April 14, 2021.

On September 21, 2011, she was appointed to the position of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs by Secretary Hillary Clinton. In this capacity, Sherman has led the US team during six negotiating rounds between Iran and six world powers about Tehran's nuclear program.

In this position, she was the fourth-highest ranking member of the Department.

She was named part of a special task force by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to implement recommendations to improve protections for Foreign Service personnel, as a result of the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Sherman was critical of Benjamin Netanyahu's commitment towards a two-state solution, suggesting it could impact the United State's veto policy surrounding related resolutions at the United Nations.

 She was criticized by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International for praising Ethiopia for "strengthening its democracy" in wake of the 2015 elections - citing democratic backsliding and suppression of human rights.

She played a role in negotiating the details behind the Syria peace talks of 2016.

Under Secretary Sherman met with Yossi Cohen, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, at the US Department of State in Washington DC on February 18, 2015.

In October 2013, before negotiations began in Geneva between Iran and the so-called "P5+1," she made a comment about the Iranian negotiating strategy in a Senate committee hearing. She said, "We know that deception is part of the DNA." This caused her some trouble when a number of Iranian officials, including some members of the country's parliament, asked her to apologize. She served as the lead negotiator for the United States in the agreement reached with Iran on July 14, 2015 in Vienna.

On February 27, 2015, Sherman told a conference at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "The Koreans and Chinese have quarreled with Tokyo over so-called comfort women from World War II. There are disagreements about the content of history books and even the names given to various bodies of water. All this is understandable, but it can also be frustrating."

She continued, "Of course, nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it's not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy. But such provocations produce paralysis, not progress." Her comments were condemned by South Korea, but an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies said the reaction to Ms Sherman's remarks seemed excessive, and that her comments were in line with US policy.

US asking Pakistan ‘to do more’ once again

The United States has asked Pakistan to take action against all extremist groups ahead of a visit of US Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman to Islamabad. Sherman will be in Pakistan on 7 and 8 October and meet with Pakistani officials.

Sherman is the highest-ranking career diplomat in the State Department as the Secretary of State, who is equivalent to a foreign minister in other countries, is always a political appointee. She is the highest-ranking US visitor to Pakistan under President Joe Biden and since Taliban’s victory in Kabul.

Sherman will be in India on 6 and 7 October where she will meet officials and civil society leaders and address US-India Business Council annual “ideas summit”.

“We seek a strong partnership with Pakistan on counter terrorism and we expect sustained action against all militant and terrorist groups without distinction,” Sherman told reporters.

“Both of our countries have suffered terribly from the scourge of terrorism and we look forward to cooperative efforts to eliminate all regional and global terrorist threats,” she said from Switzerland, her first stop on a trip that will also take her to India and Uzbekistan.

Pakistani Minister Imran Khan, a longtime critic of US military campaigns, has asked the world to engage Taliban and provide economic support.

Sherman praised Pakistan's calls for an inclusive government in Afghanistan. “We look to Pakistan to play a critical role in enabling that outcome,” she said.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met his US counterpart Antony Blinken in New York on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. Their talks focused on the current situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban ousted the pro-US Ghani government in mid-August. The takeover followed the withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn country.

The US wants Pakistan to persuade Taliban to include other factions in government, respect human rights, allow women to work and girls to attend school.

Pakistan has assured the international community that it too wants an inclusive government in Kabul and will continue urging Taliban to fulfill the promises they have made to the international community.

Rising suicide trend among US troops

Suicides among US troops rose 15% during 2020 as compared to the earlier year, according to an annual report from the Pentagon released on Thursday. The figures show that 580 US service members died by suicide last year, a nearly 80-person increase from the 504 who committed suicide in 2019.

The figure for 2020 was lower than the 543 suicides in 2018.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the new numbers "troubling," and said suicide prevention is "a paramount challenge" for the military.

"Suicide rates among our service members and military families are still too high, and the trends are not going in the right direction," Austin said in a statement Thursday. 

"We must redouble our efforts to provide all of our people with the care and the resources they need, to reduce stigmas and barriers to care, and to ensure that our community uses simple safety measures and precautions to reduce the risk of future tragedies."

He added that the Pentagon will "continue to work swiftly and urgently," in collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

USA Today was the first to report the new statistics before these were made public.

Alaska has been the site of several suicides, according to USA Today, with six suicides in the first five months of the year. The newspaper reported that the Army has spent more than US$200 million in an attempt to improve the quality of life at its bases in the state.

A study released in June this year uncovered that more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans of wars that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had committed suicide.

That number, the study noted, was almost three times as many service members who were killed in post-9/11 war operations.

Earlier in September 2021 the Department of Veteran Affairs released a report that said veteran suicides in 2019 dropped to its lowest levels observed over the previous 12 years.