
US and Chinese defence officials met in Washington for the first meeting of a Crisis Communications and Prevention Working Group, agreeing to advance practical communication measures and additional channels to reduce risks and manage crises between the two nations.
AI-generated summary
The working group was established under an agreement announced in September when leaders of the US and China met.
US and Chinese defence officials met in Washington for the first meeting of a Crisis Communications and Prevention Working Group established under an agreement announced in September when leaders of the two nations met.
The two sides agreed on the importance of “advancing practical communication measures” to reduce risks between the US and China, according to a Pentagon readout of the meeting released Tuesday. Delegates also discussed “additional channels” to promote “effective” crisis management and ways to communicate “expediently and effective”.
Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister, met in Beijing on the 4th respectively with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Huaizhong and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, who were attending the 11th Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting. The two sides exchanged views on deepening the construction of a China-Vietnam community with a shared future, the construction of an all-weather China-Cambodia community with a shared future in the new era, high-level exchanges and pragmatic cooperation.
South Africa held local government elections on the 4th. As of 17:00 local time, about 12 million voters across the country had completed voting, with Gauteng Province having the largest number of voters, about 3 million people. Voting will begin at 7 a.m. and end at 9 p.m. Registered voters who are still in line will be allowed to continue voting. There are a total of 23,696 polling stations across the country, with approximately 29.23 million registered voters. The election results will affect the future composition and governance of local governments.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mujtaba said that the results of the U.S. midterm elections will not change the U.S.'s hostility toward Iran. If the U.S. aggression repeats, Iran's response will be broader and the scale of the war will be larger. U.S. President Trump said that it is up to him to decide when the war in Iran will end, and that he does not regret starting the war in Iran and will decide whether to escalate actions based on the situation. Mediators such as Qatar and Egypt continue to mediate, but the two sides have obvious differences on key issues such as lifting oil sanctions, ending maritime blockades, and unfreezing funds. On the 4th local time, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have shot down a US military MQ-1 drone over Qeshm Island, while the United States claimed to have destroyed an Iranian surface-to-air missile launcher.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded US First Lady Melania Trump the Order of Princess Olga, First Class, for her role in brokering a partial ceasefire enabling civilian evacuation from a Russian-occupied town.

A Canadian official says the country's push to reduce economic dependence on the US will continue despite President Donald Trump's Republican Party's midterm election defeat. Prime Minister Mark Carney maintains trade with the US will not return to pre-Trump normal and Canada must urgently diversify its trading relationships. US Democratic leaders have criticized Trump's trade war with Canada and called for reversal of sweeping tariffs affecting businesses on both sides of the border.

The Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the U.S. midterm elections and will control Congress for the remainder of President Trump's term. Trump acknowledged that the war with Iran and the rising cost of living contributed to the defeat of several Republican candidates. The BBC analyzes the impact of the election results on Iran, Gulf countries, China and Russia.