Mike Pompeo

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed support Tuesday for talks between Greece and Turkey, NATO allies whose relations deteriorated to the point where both had warships facing off in the Mediterranean Sea.

The US ambassador to China will step down early next month, ending a three-year tenure marked by a trade war and increasingly bitter relations between the world’s two largest economies.

The Trump administration has taken aim at Chinese cultural programs called Confucius Institutes housed within US universities. Administrators are caught in the middle, and some say academic freedom is at risk. 

US President Donald Trump has ordered a sweeping but vague ban on dealings with the Chinese owners of popular social media apps TikTok and WeChat on security grounds, a move China’s government criticized as “political manipulation.”

China has followed through on its promises of retaliation toward the US. Beijing on Friday ordered the US to close its consulate in Chengdu. And, the Gülenists, dubbed by Turkey as FETO, the Fethullahist Terror Organization, are being purged on a massive scale. Also, as the coronavirus lockdown forced people indoors, Percibald García, an architect, grabbed a microphone and portable speaker and began doing readings of children’s stories in an empty public square in Mexico City.