World – Page 17 – praag.org

Sweden officially recognizes state of Palestine

The decision, which has drawn the ire of Israel, comes unexpectedly early

The Swedish government became the first E.U. member to officially recognize the state of Palestine on Thursday.

Newly elected Prime Minister Stefan Lofven first announced the move at his swearing-in ceremony on Oct. 3, but he was not expected to follow through so soon, writes the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“Some will claim that today’s decision comes too early. I’m rather afraid it’s too late,” writes Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. “The past year, we’ve seen how the peace negotiations once again have halted, how decisions on new settlements on occupied Palestinian land have obstructed a two-state solution and how violence has returned to Gaza.”

Wallstrom writes that the recognition aims to support moderate forces among the Palestinians, make future negotiations more equal and give young Palestinians hope of a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Israel has publicly protested the move, which some believe is feeding unrealistic Palestinian expectations of working out a resolution with the international community but without involving Israel, writes the Jerusalem Post.

A total of 134 other countries recognized Palestine before Sweden. Hungary, Poland and Slovakia all did so before joining the E.U.

Those fighting for Palestine – currently Hamas – are labeled as “terrorists” by Israel.

“EU members confirmed in 2009 their readiness to recognize the state of Palestine when it was appropriate,” Wallstrom said.

“We are now ready to take the lead. We hope this can show the way for others.”

She added that the fact that the Palestinians don’t have full control of their land or have fixed borders should not be an obstacle to international recognition.

A vote at the UN General Assembly in 2012 secured a de facto Palestinian statehood, although a ‘yes’ vote from most EU members is still pending. While Sweden is the first EU member in Western Europe to have recognized the state, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic have already done so.

Iceland – the only non-EU member in the pack, has also recognized the Palestinian state.

Zambia gets a white president, a first in Africa

Zambian Vice-President Guy Scott has been named acting head of state following the death of President Michael Sata, making him Africa’s first white leader since South Africa’s FW de Klerk.

“Dr Scott will act as president of the Republic of Zambia until the country goes for a presidential by-election,” said Defence and Justice Minister Edgar Lungu on Wednesday. This is likely to take place within 90 days.

The announcement averts a possible constitutional crisis that could have seen Lungu and Scott vie for power.

The battle for Zambia’s top job was under way before long-ailing Sata died on Tuesday, but looked to become messier and more intense in the wake of his death.

When Sata left the country for medical treatment in Britain last week, he named Lungu –- a powerful figure in the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) – as acting president.

Scott and Lungu belong to rival factions within the ruling party. But Scott (70) is not eligible to become president because of foreign parentage rules in Zambia’s 1996 Constitution; his parents are from Scotland.

“The government remains intact and so does the Patriotic Front as a party. We shall update on each decision made in this regard,” said Lungu.

The PF secretary general was among the favourites to take over as leader of the major copper-producing country of 15-million people.

Lungu leads one of two main camps that formed this year within the PF leadership when it became clear that Sata was in poor health, although this was denied regularly by the government.

Lungu was likely to enjoy the backing of a majority Bemba-speaking group as the presidential candidate, despite it not being his ethnic language.

Other candidates included Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda, former defence minister Geoffrey Mwamba and Sata’s son, Mulenga, who is the mayor of Lusaka and PF chairperson for Lusaka province.

Chikwanda, a veteran finance minister, was given presidential powers at times when Sata was out of the country.

British spies allowed warrantless access to US data

Newly released documents from the British government reveal a lack of judicial oversight for how it sifts through communications data collected by the NSA and other foreign governments

British authorities are capable of tapping into bulk communications data collected by other countries’ intelligence services—including the National Security Agency—without a warrant, according to secret government documents released Tuesday.

The agreement between the NSA and Britain’s spy agency, known as Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, potentially puts the Internet and phone data of Americans in the hands of another country without legal oversight when obtaining a warrant is “not technically feasible.”

The data, once obtained, can be kept for up to two years, according to internal policies disclosed by the British government. GCHQ was forced to reveal that it can request and receive vast quantities of raw, unanalyzed data collected from foreign governments it partners with during legal proceedings in a closed court hearing in a case brought by various international human-rights organizations, including Privacy International, Liberty U.K., and Amnesty International. The suit challenges certain aspects of GCHQ’s surveillance practices.

It is well known that the NSA and GCHQ closely share intelligence data with one another, as part of a long-standing surveillance partnership. Some details of the agencies’ spy pact were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year, including the existence of GCHQ’s Tempora program, which taps into fiber-optic cables to scoop up online and telephone traffic across the Web for up to 30 days.

But this is the first time the British government has disclosed that it does not require a warrant to access data collected and maintained by its American counterparts. The revelation appears to counter statements made by an oversight committee of the British Parliament in July of last year that “in each case where GCHQ sought information from the U.S., a warrant for interception, signed by a minister, was already in place.”

Source: National Journal

Israel approves plan to build 1 000 settler homes in E. Jerusalem

The Israeli government has approved plans to build over 1,000 new settler homes in East Jerusalem. It will expand two existing Israeli settlements on part of the territories seized in 1967.

An official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the possible political and diplomatic impact. He said on Monday that “The government has decided to advance the planning of more than 1,000 units in Jerusalem – roughly 400 in Har Homa and about 600 in Ramat Shlomo,” as cited by Reuters.

He also said that plans would be “advanced for infrastructure projects in the West Bank that will include roads for the Palestinians.”

However, Palestinians regard the holy city of Jerusalem as a future capital of their state and strongly oppose any Israeli expansion. According to Reuters, in a statement the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said that “We strongly condemn the latest Israeli announcement to expand its illegal settlements in and around occupied East Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Palestine.”

“This announcement amounts to evidence of an intent to further commit crimes defined by, and punishable under international law,” he added.

The new plan isn’t welcomed by some Israeli politicians. Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party told Reuters the settlement building “should not be promoted now because there is a crisis with the US and the world.”

“There is never a good time to do such things, now more than ever as Jerusalem is burning,” Lior Amichai of the settlement watchdog Peace Now told AFP. He added that it was unclear at what stage the Israeli plans were, or how close they were to construction.

The international community hasn’t shown any support for Israeli settlement building. Relations with Israel’s traditional ally the US have also become strained over public criticism of US foreign policy by Israeli officials.

Palestine warns about increasing tension

The latest Israeli moves come after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sent an “urgent letter” to US President Barack Obama concerning the “dangerous Israeli escalation” in East Jerusalem on Sunday night, reported the Jerusalem Post.

According to a statement released by the president’s office in Ramallah, Abbas warned that a “wider explosion that cannot be controlled,” could be triggered by Israel’s recent measures, including the suggestion to allow Jews to pray at the Temple Mount compound.

The Palestinian President also blamed the Israeli government for the “dangerous escalation”; the recent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian rioters in East Jerusalem this weekend. Hundreds of Palestinians marched in several neighborhoods of the city, throwing stones and firecrackers at Israeli police, and 18 arrests were made, according to Haaretz.

Last week’s clashes marked a new wave of tension that has been running high since June. That’s when three Israeli teenagers were abducted and killed by Palestinian militants in the West Bank, and Israeli extremists responded with the abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager in East Jerusalem. The riots contributed to the 50-day Gaza war that claimed the lives of over 2,000 people, most of them Palestinians.

It is a sidestep by Netanyahu’s office, as the ultranationalist Jewish Home party and its leader Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, has been pressing the Prime Minister to call for 2,000 new building tenders.

Oz shuts the door on ebola

Australia has issued a blanket ban on visas from West African nations affected by the Ebola outbreak to prevent the disease reaching the country, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said, becoming the first rich nation to shut its doors to the region.

Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground.

The decision to refuse entry for anyone from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, while touted by the government as a necessary safety precaution, was criticised by experts and advocates as politically motivated and short sighted.

“The government has strong controls for the entry of persons to Australia under our immigration programme from West Africa,” Morrison told parliament on Monday.

“These measures include temporarily suspending our immigration programme, including our humanitarian programme from Ebola-affected countries, and this means we are not processing any application from these affected countries.”

All non-permanent or temporary visas were being cancelled and permanent visa holders who had not yet arrived in Australia will be required to submit to a 21-day quarantine period, he added.

A number of US states, including New York and New Jersey, have also imposed mandatory quarantines on returning doctors and nurses amid fears of the virus spreading outside of West Africa. Federal health officials say their approach is extreme.

The Ebola outbreak that began in March has killed nearly 5 000 people, the vast majority in West Africa. The disease has an incubation period of about three weeks, and becomes contagious when a victim shows symptoms.

Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.

Australia has contributed A$18 million to help fight the disease but has been criticised by medical groups, opposition lawmakers and rights groups for not sending teams to affected regions.

The risks to Australia were already small due to its geographical isolation, said Dr Adam Kamradt-Scott, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity.

The visa ban, he said, would do nothing to protect the country from Ebola while potentially having a negative public health impact by unduly raising fears about the disease and creating a general climate of panic.

“This blanket ban actually does very little to reduce the risk of Ebola arriving in Australia. It also sends a very bad message both in terms of our humanitarian assistance programme as well as Australia’s attitude towards West Africa at the moment,” he told Reuters.

“This is purely just a political decision. There is very little scientific evidence or medical rationale why you would choose to do this, and this is the type of politics we find starts to interfere with effective public health measures.”

Earlier in October, it was revealed that Australia had turned down requests from Britain and the United States to send personnel to Sierra Leone to assist in combating the outbreak there, as well as additional funding.

Australia’s “narrow approach” to Ebola makes no sense from a health perspective, given that applicants for humanitarian visas are already screened and monitored for illnesses, said Graham Thom, a spokesperson for Amnesty International Australia.

Refusing to send healthcare workers while at the same time refusing entry to those most in need will further damage Australia’s reputation, already under fire over its tough asylum seeker policies, he said.

“There are ways and means in which people can be monitored, quarantined to insure that those who come are free from the disease,” he told Reuters.

“All it does is insure that already exceedingly vulnerable people are trapped in a crisis area and sends a signal about Australia’s commitment to actually dealing with this crisis in a responsible way as a member of the international community.”

Source: Reuters

Brazil’s president wins re-election

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff narrowly won re-election on Sunday after convincing voters of her party’s strong record of reducing poverty over the last 12 years.

Rousseff won 51.6 percent of votes in a runoff against centrist opposition leader Aecio Neves, who won 48.4 percent support.

The campaign was one of the most dramatic in Brazil since direct elections were restored in 1989. One candidate was killed in a plane crash in August, and his replacement then soared into the lead in opinion polls, only to fade in the final days before the first round of voting October 5.

The vote split Latin America’s biggest country almost evenly in two along lines of both social class and geography. Neves prevailed in Brazil’s richer south, southeast and centre-west, while Rousseff took the Amazon north and impoverished north-east.

Voting was peaceful.

The result means another four years in power for the Workers’ Party, which since 2003 has virtually transformed Brazil – lifting 40 million from poverty, reducing unemployment to record lows and making big inroads against hunger in what remains one of the world’s most unequal countries.

With 200 million people and a gross domestic product of $2-trillion, Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy and its most populous country.

Rousseff owed her victory to overwhelming support from the roughly 40 percent of Brazilians who live in households earning less than $700 a month.

They have benefited from the Workers’ Party’s rollout of a programme that pays a small monthly stipend to one in four Brazilian families, as well as federal housing programs, government-sponsored vocational schools and an expansion of credit to the working class.

Rousseff, 66, is unlikely to enjoy much, if any, of a honeymoon when her second term starts on New Year’s Day.

Marco Aurelio Garcia, a top Rousseff adviser on foreign affairs, sounded a defiant note shortly after the results were published. Asked what the government’s message to financial markets was, he replied: “Take tranquillisers.”

During the runoff, senior leaders from both parties compared their rivals to Nazis.

Rousseff, who was jailed and tortured in the early 1970s for opposing that era’s military dictatorship, is the country’s first woman president. The daughter of a Bulgarian aristocrat who emigrated to Brazil during World War 2, she was a relatively obscure government technocrat until her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hand-picked her as his successor.

Many in the Workers’ Party are already thinking ahead to the next election in 2018, when Lula, who governed from 2003 to 2010, has said he may run again. Brazil’s constitution doesn’t allow presidents to seek a third consecutive term.

Rousseff repeatedly thanked Lula for his support on Sunday night, and gave him a big hug onstage.

Neves’ PSDB, meanwhile, faces an uncertain future after falling short in three straight presidential contests due in part to its image as the party of Brazil’s wealthy minority.

Canadian soldier dies after gunmen’s attack on parliament in Ottawa

A soldier who was shot at a war memorial at the start of an attack by one or more gunmen on Canada’s parliament has died of his wounds, a government minister said.

“Condolences to family of the soldier killed and prayers for the parliamentary guard wounded. Canada will not be terrorized or intimidated,” employment minister Jason Kenney said on Twitter.

CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years

A study conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has cast doubt over Israel’s survival beyond the next 20 years.

The CIA report predicts “an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable peace in the region.”

The study, which has been made available only to a certain number of individuals, further forecasts the return of all Palestinian refugees to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israeli – who would move to the US in the next fifteen years.

“There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than 300,000 living in the area of just California,” International lawyer Franklin Lamb said in an interview with Press TV on Friday, adding that those who do not have American or western passport, have already applied for them.

“So I think the handwriting at least among the public in Israel is on the wall…[which] suggests history will reject the colonial enterprise sooner or later,” Lamb stressed.

He said CIA, in its report, alludes to the unexpectedly quick fall of the apartheid government in South Africa and recalls the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, suggesting the end to the dream of an ‘Israeli land’ would happen ‘way sooner’ than later.

The study further predicts the return of over one and a half million Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe, and denotes a decline in Israeli births whereas a rise in the Palestinian population.

Lamb said given the Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and the Gaza strip in particular, the American public — which has been voicing its protest against Tel Aviv’s measures in the last 25 years — may ‘not take it anymore’.

Some members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have been informed of the report.

Source: MRS/MMN

‘Obama’s immoral and illegal war in Iraq and Syria’: Ron Paul

Obama’s new wars in Iraq and Syria are totally immoral as well as illegal under US and international law, RPI Chairman Ron Paul told RT’s Abby Martin in September. The idea that US force will solve the problem is also mistaken, he said. “US action will increase the violence,” rather than reduce it, he added.

In a lengthy interview, broadcast on RT’s popular “Breaking the Set” program, Dr. Paul wonders why the countries in the region, feeling the pressure from ISIS, do not get together to solve the problem.

Said Dr. Paul about US involvement in the fight:

Why should someone 6,000 miles away, that has been stirring this pot for so long, be the group that is going to bring everyone together and organize the fight?

The fearmongers who have terrified many Americans into supporting another war in the Middle East are “not concerned with the defense of America,” said Ron Paul. But the weapons manufacturers are making out very well, with the US bombing its own weapons that have fallen into the hands of ISIS. – Daniel McAdams

Watch the whole interview here:

Rwanda screens US, Spanish visitors for ebola

The East African nation of Rwanda is requiring all visitors from the United States and Spain to self-monitor, fill out an extensive questionnaire and report their medical condition for the first 21 days of their visits because of the Ebola cases that have surfaced in the two Western countries.

Coincidentally or not, the new screening follows an embarrassing uproar in a New Jersey school over the imminent enrollment of two Rwanda children that initially prompted their parents to keep them at home for 21 days.

The order by the Rwanda government to visiting Americans and Spaniards was posted Tuesday on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda:

“On October 19, the Rwandan Ministry of Health introduced new Ebola Virus Disease screening requirements. Visitors who have been in the United States or Spain during the last 22 days are now required to report their medical condition—regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms of Ebola—by telephone by dialing 114 between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. for the duration of their visit to Rwanda (if less than 21 days), or for the first 21 days of their visit to Rwanda. Rwandan authorities continue to deny entry to visitors who traveled to Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, or Sierra Leone within the past 22 days.”

The U.S. and Spain have both recorded deaths from Ebola. In Dallas, a Liberian national died of the virus two weeks ago and two nurses who treated him tested positive for the virus. At least two Spanish missionaries died in Spain after contracting the disease in West Africa. One Spanish nurse also tested positive for the virus.

Rwanda is located in East Africa about 2,600 miles east of Liberia, the closest of the three West African countries with the Ebola outbreak. Rwanda has been unaffected by the Ebola outbreak on the other side of the continent and has reported no cases of the virus.

The dust-up in New Jersey involving two Rwanda children took a new turn Monday with an apology by the superintendent of the Maple Shade School District in Burlington County.

The children were supposed to begin classes Monday at Howard Yocum Elementary School in Maple Shade, N.J., but ran into a backlash from other parents, WTXF-TV in Philadelphia.com reports.

The uproar started after a school nurse sent a note to staff members saying that the school intended to take the temperature of the two students three times a day for the next 3 weeks, the normal incubation period for Ebola.

Source: USA Today

US college bans all students from Ebola countries in Africa

“Navarro College is not accepting international students from countries with confirmed Ebola cases.”

It was with shock that 33-year-old Nigerian-American academic Idris Bello read this sentence, signaling the rejection of a friend’s Nigerian brother-in-law to the Texas community college based solely on his citizenship. “I didn’t believe it, I was so surprised. I thought: This cannot be,” Bello says.

A lead entrepreneur in Africa, with a master’s degree in global health from Oxford University, Bello received a copy of the letter from Dr. Kamor Abidogun, a mechanical engineer and friend of his in Houston. Abidogun’s brother-in-law also decided to apply to Navarro, and used his address as the point of contact. Along with the letter he received rejecting his 29-year-old brother-in-law, Abidogun received an identical one for his 20-year-old nephew, who had also decided to apply from Nigeria.

According to the letter, the small community college 20 miles outside of Dallas has decided to stop accepting students from places with confirmed cases of Ebola. Nigeria, it seems, is an odd place to enact that policy. The country of 174 million has only registered 20 total cases of Ebola since the index patient in July, a response so strikingly effective that the CDC dispatched a team to the country to study their methods.

Already through the first 21-day incubation period following the initial cases, the country is now just five days away from being officially declared by the World Health Organization as Ebola-free. Much of the response is believed to center around what WHO has declared “world-class epidemiological detective work,” which traced all 20 cases back to one passenger at the Lagos airport—ironically, an American.

Unlike its three most affected neighboring countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, Nigerian citizens are under no threat of becoming infected with the disease within their borders, or at least no more than the threat we face in our country—and definitely not as much risk as an institution merely minutes away from its own outbreak.

The country of 174 million has only registered 20 total cases of Ebola since the index patient in July, a response so strikingly effective that the CDC dispatched a team to the country to study their methods.

Seven days after receiving the letter from Navarro, Abidogun had yet to break the “bad news” to his brother-in-law and his nephew. Neither applied to other universities. Living in Ibadan, Oyo State, neither are anywhere close to the small epidemic that swept through Nigeria in July—nor have either of them ever visited the most affected countries.

While Bello says he’s faced this kind of misinformed fear himself—he was recently stopped at a gym in Houston and asked if he’s Liberian, for example—he was most shocked to find an actual college making the same judgments. “I’ve had several people in the community act that way, but this is the first time I was going [heard] that from an institution,” says Bello. “An institution of learning, for that matter.”

He wasn’t the only one appalled by the news. When Bello posted the letter on his website, many took to Twitter to express similar feelings of disappointment. “@NavarroCollege so you won’t be accepting any Americans given Texas has confirmed cases? Seems like your enrollment will plummet. #messedup,” wrote one user. “I’m sure they didn’t mind discriminating against students from Africa beforehand, but this just gives them a new easy out,” posted another. “What a gross display of open bias. They descended too low. My brother, just choose another school,” said a third.

For Bello, spreading the message of this case isn’t about Navarro. Instead, it’s about influencing how American universities handle the epidemic in relation to their admissions moving forward. “I understand the fear about Ebola, but we’re not going to tackle epidemics by being scared or by misinformation, it’s going to be true education,” says Bello. “They are teaching students to be leaders in the future. Someone from that school needs to step forward and say, listen we made a mistake we are going to fix that mistake.” – thedailybeast.com

Ebola threatens chocolate industry

Ebola is threatening much of the world’s chocolate supply.

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer of cacao, the raw ingredient in M&M’s, Butterfingers and Snickers Bars, has shut down its borders with Liberia and Guinea, putting a major crimp on the workforce needed to pick the beans that end up in chocolate bars and other treats just as the harvest season begins. The West African nation of about 20 million — also known as Côte D’Ivoire — has yet to experience a single case of Ebola, but the outbreak already could raise prices.

The world’s chocolate makers have taken notice.

The World Cocoa Foundation is working now to collect large donations from Nestlé, Mars and many of its 113 other members for its Coca Industry Response to Ebola Initiative. The initiative hasn’t been publicly unveiled, but the WCF plans to announce details Wednesday, during its annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on how the money will fuel Red Cross and Caritas Internationalis work to help the infected and staunch Ebola’s spread.

Ivory Coast, which produces about 1.6 million metric tons of cacao beans per year — roughly 33 percent of the world’s total, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — closed its borders in August to Guinea and Liberia. More than 8,000 have been diagnosed with Ebola, and nearly 4,000 have died in those two countries and Sierra Leone. Next to Ivory Coast is Ghana, the world’s third-largest producer of cacao beans — 879,348 metric tons per year — or 15 percent of the world’s total.

Source: Politico

Formaldehyde in water allegedly causing ebola-like symptoms

A man in Schieffelin, Liberia, has been arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community.

Reports say around 10 a.m., he approached the well with powder in a bottle. Mobbed by the community, he confessed that he had been paid to put formaldeyde into the well, and that he was not the only one. He reportedly told community dwellers, “We are many.” There are are agents in Harbel, Dolostown, Cotton Tree and other communities around the ountry, he said.

State radio, ELBC, reports that least 10 people in the Dolostown community have died after drinking water from poisoned wells.
The man also alleged that some water companies, particularly those bagging mineral water to sell, are also involved. The poison, he said, produces Ebola-like symptoms and subsequently kills people.

The Observer had previously been informed that people dressed as nurses were going into communities with ‘Ebola Vaccines’. Once injected, it reportedly produces Ebola-like symptoms and sends victims into a coma. Shortly thereafter, victims expire. Communities are now reportedly chasing vaccine peddlers out of their communities. After 10 children reportedly died from the ‘vaccine’ in Bensonville, the peddlers were reportedly chased out of the community upon their next visit.

It is possible that the ‘vaccine’ is/was composed of the same formaldehyde-water mixture. This publication has received reports from families whose loved ones’ organs were missing upon return of the bodies to the families. Families suspect an organ trafficking operation is capitalizing on the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Liberia.

The district’s representative condemned the act as barbaric, but called upon Liberians not to doubt the existence of the Ebola virus in the country.

An investigation is ongoing.

Source: The Observer

America usurped: China becomes world’s largest economy

Last week the International Monetary Fund updated its data on the world economy. For the first time it ranks China’s economy as the world’s biggest in purchasing-power-parity terms.

Historians, though, point out that China is merely regaining a title that it has held for much of recorded history.

In 1820 it probably produced one-third of global economic output. The brief interlude in which America overshadowed it is now over.

The White House seemed oblivious on Wednesday, crowing that “the economic policies that this president put in place are the envy of the world”.

They seemed caught flat-footed by the news.

The latest IMF figures show the Chinese economy is worth $17.61 trillion compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.

The figure is controversial as it requires the comparison of a huge amount of goods and services, and is therefore a vast statistical undertaking that can only be conducted infrequently with estimates used during intervening periods. The methods used to collect the data have also led to controversy in the past.

When it comes the raw GDP data base on exchange rates, China will eventually also overtake the US if it carries on growing as it has, but that is still likely to take some years.