And yet ... :
Guido Crosetto, Italy's defense minister, just slammed his country's decision to join China's Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, describing it as "improvised and atrocious."
The country's now mulling a diplomatic exit by the end of 2023.
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I wouldn't trust him, Miss Meloni:
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has briefed U.S. President Joe Biden on her plan to curb Italy’s reliance on China and to establish balanced ties with the Asian country, as she mulls a strategy to disentangle from a controversial investment pact.
"If you think that the U.S. demands or imposes the policy on this, you are wrong. The conversation is broad and involves all G7 countries and it is about de-risking from supply chain dependence on China, which is a priority,” the prime minister told reporters after a meeting at the Oval Office with Biden on Thursday. "The U.S. knows we are trustworthy.”
Meloni added that a decision on the Belt and Road initiative pact will be taken by the end of the year. "It is crucial to keep a constructive dialog open with Beijing,” she said.
In an interview published Sunday, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called the decision to join the Belt and Road initiative "improvised and atrocious" as it did little to boost exports.
"The issue today is: how to walk back (from the initiative) without damaging relations (with Beijing). Because it is true that China is a competitor, but it is also a partner," the defense minister added.
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Why isn't this a huge deal?:
Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.
“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”
Hundreds of mice at the warehouse were kept in inhumane conditions, court documents said. The city took possession of the animals in April, euthanizing 773 of them; more than 175 were found dead.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.
An investigation found the tenant was Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and unlicensed for business in California. City officials spoke with Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company president, through emails included in the court documents.
Yao told officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents.
Officials were unable to get any California-based address for either company except for the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.
“The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.
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Was it something they said and did?:
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