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BEIJING (Reuters) -U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said U.S. companies have complained to her that China has become “uninvestable”, pointing to fines, raids and other actions against firms that have made it too risky to do business in the world’s second largest economy.The comments, made to reporters onboard a train as her delegation of U.S. officials headed from Beijing to Shanghai, provided a bleak picture of the how U.S. firms view China and were the bluntest Raimondo has made on her trip.”Increasingly I hear from American business that China is uninvestable because it’s become too risky,” she said. “So businesses look for other opportunities, they look for other countries, they look for other places to go.”Raimondo said that there was “no rationale given” for Chinese actions against chipmaker Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) , whose products were restricted by Beijing earlier this year and rejected any comparisons to U.S. export controls. “There has been limited due process and that’s why I brought it up.”Earlier in the day she had said the United States wants to work with China to solve problems such as climate change and artificial intelligence, speaking with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday.Raimondo is the latest Biden administration official to visit China in a bid to strengthen communications, particularly on economy and defense, amid concerns that friction between the two superpowers could spiral out of control. “There are other areas of global concern, such as climate change, artificial intelligence, the fentanyl crisis, where we want to work with you as two global powers to do what’s right for all of humanity,” Raimondo told Li at their meeting in the Great Hall of the People. More

(Reuters) -Hurricane Idalia strengthened on Tuesday as it lumbered toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, where officials ordered evacuations and urged millions of residents to brace for a possible major Category 3 tempest to make landfall on Wednesday.Idalia was expected to attain major-hurricane status – with sustained winds topping at least 111 miles per hour (179 kph) – on Wednesday morning before slamming ashore later in the day, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).The NHC projected Idalia’s center would likely cross Florida’s coastline somewhere in the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves around into the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula.The intensifying storm was on an uncertain path as it spun northward over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It put most of Florida’s 21 million residents, along with those in the southern parts of Georgia and South Carolina, under hurricane, tropical storm and storm surge warnings and advisories.Authorities said Idalia’s chief threat to human life stemmed from surging walls of seawater that would be driven inland by high winds, inundating low-lying coastal areasStorm surge warnings were posted for hundreds of miles of shoreline, from Sarasota in the north through Tampa and stretching to the sport fishing haven of Indian Pass at the western end of Apalachicola Bay. SURGES UP TO 12 FEET HIGHIn some spots, the surge of water could rise 8 feet (2.44 m) to 12 feet, the National Hurricane Center said. Storm surge and urban flash flooding made previous hurricanes deadly, FEMA Chief Deanne Criswell said on CNN on Tuesday. “The No. 1 killer in all of these storms is water,” she said. St. Petersburg residents living in areas prone to flooding were urged to leave by Tuesday afternoon, the city’s police chief Anthony Holloway said on CNN. “Those surges are going to be what we’re really worried about, about flooding in our city,” he told CNN, adding that the city had opened four shelters for those who needed to leave their homes.Idalia intensified into a hurricane early on Tuesday. It was expected to reach Category 3 force – classified as a major hurricane – on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale by the time it makes Florida landfall on Wednesday, the NHC said.It would mark the fourth major hurricane to strike Florida over the past seven years, following Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018 and Ian, which peaked at Category 5, last September.The NHC said Idalia was churning about 320 miles (515 km) southwest of Tampa as it crept northward, packing maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph).BRUSH WITH CUBACubans rushed to evacuate coastal towns, batten down homes and secure fishing boats as Idalia lingered for hours on Monday near the western end of the Caribbean island nation.By mid-afternoon, brown floodwaters had swamped the small fishing village of Guan, one hour’s drive south of Havana.Decades-old buses missing floorboards and windows carried women and children to higher ground as winds howled, rattling tin roofs and slamming fishing boats tucked in the mangroves.”We’ve had two days of rain already,” said Yadira Alvarez, 34, as she readied for evacuation with her five children. “We try to prepare, but no matter what we do everything will be soaked.”Stormwater had already swelled to near knee-height inside her home, she said.Farther to the west, more intense winds closer to the storm center pounded the tobacco-rich province of Pinar del Rio, home to the raw material for some of the world’s finest Cuban cigars.Authorities had evacuated tens of thousands of people from that province as well as neighboring Artemisa, while squalls of heavy rain doused the Cuban capital of Havana.MOVING TO HIGHER GROUND The evacuation of barrier islands and other low-lying areas of Florida’s Gulf Coast began on Monday.Shannon Hartsfield, who runs a fishing boat in Apalachicola Bay along the state’s panhandle, heeded the warnings, even though he lives west of where landfall was expected. Hartsfield and many fellow anglers had pulled most of their boats from the bay and moved them to higher ground, he said. Others who ran out of time and left their crab traps behind must now wait to assess their losses after the storm.From Tuesday through Thursday, Florida’s Gulf Coast along with southeastern Georgia and eastern portions of North and South Carolina would face torrential rains of 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) that could unleash scattered flooding, in addition to tidal inundation from storm surges, the hurricane center warned.School districts across the region canceled classes starting on Monday afternoon. Tampa International Airport planned to suspend commercial operations beginning at midday Tuesday.Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 46 Florida counties. Some 5,500 National Guard troops were mobilized and thousands of electricity workers readied to help restore power quickly after the hurricane passes.Far to the east of Idalia, Hurricane Franklin, the first major hurricane of the season, meandered in the Atlantic, and was forecast to turn to the northeast over the next two days. The Category 4 storm threatened to bring heavy swells to Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast throughout the week. More

Lula, who has long campaigned for Brazil and other countries to be permanently included in the council, is expected to meet Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly next month in New York.Last week, during a summit of the BRICS group of emerging nations in South Africa, the leftist leader called on fellow BRICS members China and Russia to support more countries entering the council as permanent members.Lula says the council must reflect current global geopolitical conditions instead of those of the 1940s, suggesting that countries such as Brazil, India, Germany, Japan and South Africa should be made permanent members. The Brazilian leader added in a live broadcast on social media that BRICS members have agreed to discuss until next year’s summit the possibility of establishing a common currency for trade between them.He also said he hopes the Brazilian Congress will help his administration “protect the poorest, not the richest” in the country, after he signed an executive order to tax closed-end and offshore funds.The measures, now pending congressional approval, are seen as essential for the government to boost public revenue and reach its commitment to zero primary deficit by next year, as they offset a revenue loss from expanded income tax exemptions for individuals.Lula is widely expected to announce a cabinet reshuffle soon in order to secure more support for his administration in Congress, naming some members from centrist and center-right parties as ministers.Creating a new ministry has been floated as a way to diversify his team without making major changes to the current cabinet, and Lula said on Tuesday he is now considering establishing a ministry of small- and medium-sized businesses. More

A German businessman has been detained for allegedly providing electrical components to Russia that were used to make Orlan-10 drones deployed in the war in Ukraine, in a case that highlights the problem of sanctions evasion by western technology firms.Waldemar W, a German citizen of Russian origin, was remanded in custody after federal prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant in an investigation where he is suspected of violating Germany’s law on foreign trade, said the country’s attorney-general on Tuesday.The case underscores the mounting scrutiny that western exports of high-tech goods to Russian firms have been subjected to since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Investigators are increasingly focusing on the use of third countries to get around export bans aimed at starving Vladimir Putin’s military of the products it needs to sustain its war against Ukraine.Prosecutors said Waldemar W — German authorities never divulge the surname of suspects in criminal cases — ran two companies in the western state of Saarland that deal in electronic components.They said that in 26 instances between January 2020 and March 2023, he exported such components to a company in Russia that produced military gear and materiel, including the Orlan-10 drones currently being deployed by Russia in Ukraine.They said the components he sold, with a total value of about €715,000, were an integral part of the Orlans and are on the EU’s list of sanctioned goods.A study by the Royal United Services Institute from late last year called the Orlan-10 Russia’s “most successful UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)”, describing it as a “platform that sits at the heart of the country’s warfighting capabilities”. It said it enabled the Russian army to “rain accurate fire down on Ukrainian formations”. Rusi said Russian companies closely associated with the St Petersburg-based Special Technology Centre, the Russian manufacturer of the Orlan-10, had “drastically increased imports of critical Western-manufactured components” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.The German prosecutors’ statement said Waldemar W evaded EU sanctions by importing the goods from abroad and then exporting them to Russia through a company he controlled in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.The components were sent to two dummy civilian companies registered in Russia, which then passed them on to an arms manufacturer, in close consultation with the accused.

Prosecutors said that after the start of the Ukraine war, the accused started to send the goods to Russia with the help of sham beneficiary companies in third countries such as Dubai and Lithuania.The US and EU have also pushed countries like the UAE to halt exports of critical goods to Russia, amid fears they were becoming hubs for the shipment of items that could be repurposed to help Russia’s war effort.In June the EU adopted a new sanctions package against Russia that was in part aimed at clamping down on widespread sanctions evasion through third countries.The new anti-circumvention framework allowed the EU to prohibit exports of sensitive dual-use and high-tech goods and technology to third countries that had been identified as having persistently failed to prevent supplies of such goods from the EU to Russia. More