Politico: “U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in an interview on Thursday that the Biden administration plans to ‘build on’ existing tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese imports and confront Beijing for failing to fulfill its obligations under a Trump-brokered trade agreement.”

A German court issued an arrest warrant for a 96-year-old woman who was a secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp during World War II after she fled before the start of her trial, Reuters reports.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of violating campaign finance laws during his unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2012 and sentenced to a year of house arrest, the AP reports.

“In a classified briefing with senators on Tuesday, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley directly blamed the State Department for a botched evacuation from Afghanistan, saying officials ‘waited too long’ to order the operation out of Kabul’s airport,” Axios reports.

“Those private remarks were far more blunt than Milley’s public testimony, in which the nation’s top general said the issue of whether the order should have been given earlier is an “open question that needs further exploration.”

Nikkei Asia: “Billionaires banished. Celebrities canceled. Private businesses wiped out overnight with the stroke of the ruling communist party’s pen, along with a ban on the once-common practice of raising money offshore.”

“All of which has been prompting officials, investors and indeed anyone with a stake in the future of the world’s largest country to ask — what on earth is going on in President Xi Jinping’s China?”

Richard Haass: “Donald Trump was supposed to be an aberration—a U.S. president whose foreign policy marked a sharp but temporary break from an internationalism that had defined seven decades of U.S. interactions with the world. He saw little value in alliances and spurned multilateral institutions. He eagerly withdrew from existing international agreements, such as the Paris climate accord and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and backed away from new ones, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He coddled autocrats and trained his ire on the United States’ democratic partners.”

“At first glance, the foreign policy of U.S. President Joe Biden could hardly be more different… But the differences, meaningful as they are, obscure a deeper truth: there is far more continuity between the foreign policy of the current president and that of the former president than is typically recognized.”

“President Biden is planning a US-led alternative to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure scheme in South America to thwart Beijing’s global ambitions,” the Times of London reports.

“Biden will dispatch a team of officials to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama next week in a drive known in the White House as “Build Back Better for the World”. It follows talks at the G7 in Cornwall to establish a scheme to rival China’s global investment initiative.”

“Russia sharply escalated a campaign against jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday, opening a new criminal case against President Putin’s fiercest domestic critic that could allow the authorities to hand him another decade in jail,” Reuters reports.

“The CIA evacuated an intelligence officer serving in Serbia in recent weeks who suffered serious injuries consistent with the neurological attacks known as Havana Syndrome,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The incident in the Balkans, which hasn’t been previously reported, is the latest in what the officials describe as a steady expansion of attacks on American spies and diplomats posted overseas by unknown assailants using what government officials and scientists suspect is some sort of directed-energy source.”

“The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday denied U.S. landing rights for a charter plane carrying more than 100 Americans and U.S. green card holders evacuated from Afghanistan,” Reuters reports.

“Top military officials told lawmakers on Tuesday that they had recommended 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, contradicting comments made by President Biden earlier this year,” The Hill reports.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, are testifying before Congress for the first time since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Axios reports.

“Austin said in his opening statement that military leaders began planning for a non-combatant evacuation of Kabul as early as the spring, and that this is the only reason U.S. troops were able to start the operation so quickly when the Taliban captured the city.”

Said Austin: “Was it perfect? Of course not.”

The Economist: “Angela Merkel’s departure will leave a big hole in Germany—and much for her successor to do.”

“North Korea fired a short-range missile into the sea Tuesday at nearly the same moment its U.N. diplomat was decrying the U.S.’s ‘hostile policy’ against it, in an apparent return to its pattern of mixing weapons displays with peace overtures to wrest outside concessions,” the AP reports.

“The Pentagon’s top military officer discussed with his Russian counterpart an apparent offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his military’s bases in Central Asia to respond to any emerging terrorist threats in Afghanistan,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“French President Emmanuel Macron was hit with an egg while he was visiting Lyon on Monday to promote French gastronomy,” Reuters reports.

“The Taliban hanged a dead body from a crane parked in a city square in Afghanistan on Saturday in a gruesome display that signaled the hard-line movement’s return to some of its brutal tactics of the past,” the AP reports.