U.S. President Donald Trump issued executive orders on Thursday banning any U.S. transactions with ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent, owner of the WeChat app, starting in 45 days.The orders come as the Trump administration said this week it was stepping up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks and called the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok and messenger app WeChat “significant threats.”The TikTok app may be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, and the United States “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” Trump said in one order.In the other, Trump said WeChat “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”The order would effectively ban WeChat in the United States in 45 days by barring “to the extent permitted under applicable law, any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd.”Trump said this week he would support the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp if the U.S. government got a “substantial portion” of the sales price but warned he will ban the service in the United States on September 15.Tencent and ByteDance declined to comment.    
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on Thursday lost its bid to add a fourth debate with Democratic challenger Joe Biden in early September.In rejecting the request, the Commission on Presidential Debates said it remains committed to the current schedule of three 90-minute debates beginning in late September.It would only add a fourth debate, or move an existing debate to earlier in the month, if both sides in the campaign for the November 3 election agreed to it, it said.Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had asked for either a fourth debate in the first week of September or for the first debate to be moved up from September 29 because voters in some states would already be able to cast votes before then.The commission said voters will have a choice whether to watch a debate before casting a ballot, adding voters “are under no compulsion to return their ballots before the debates.”Trump, a Republican, is trailing Biden in most national opinion polls.The battleground state of North Carolina is scheduled to begin sending out mail-in ballots to registered voters who requested them on September 4, with several other states to follow in September. A massive surge in mail-in voting is expected because of fears the coronavirus may spread at public polling places.In a response to the commission, Giuliani said the campaign was “disappointed” by the rejection and still believed Americans deserve to see the candidates “compare their records and visions for the United States before actual voting begins.”The Biden campaign said it was pleased Trump had accepted the commission invitation to debate.”As we have said for months, the commission will determine the dates and times of the debates, and Joe Biden will be there,” Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo said.The commission has organized three debates and one vice presidential debate during each presidential campaign since 2000. The presidential debates are set for September 29 in Ohio, October 15 in Florida and October 22 in Tennessee.   
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Federal law enforcement agents are being deployed in two additional American cities amid a spike in violent crime.The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that it was expanding Operation Legend, a recently launched effort to fight violent crime, to Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri.That brought the number of cities to which federal agents have been deployed to crack down on violent crime to eight. Previously, agents were sent to Kansas City, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit and Milwaukee.Operation Legend was launched July 8 in Kansas City. It is named after LeGend Taliferro, a 4-year old African American boy who died while sleeping in his bed when someone shot into his family’s home in Kansas City on June 29.’Systematic’ initiativeThe Justice Department describes the operation as “a sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies work in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials to fight violent crime.”Operation Legend is unrelated to the more controversial deployment of federal law enforcement agents to Portland, Oregon. Federal agents were sent there to protect a federal courthouse from protesters whom Trump administration officials had accused of committing acts of violence.FILE – Shelby County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Anthony Buckner talks to reporters about a shooting in which two deputies were injured and a suspect was fatally shot, Sept. 18, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn. Homicides in the city are up nearly 50% in 2020.“Today, we have extended Operation Legend to Memphis and St. Louis, two cities experiencing increases in violent crime that no resident of those cities should have to accept as part of everyday life,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.In Memphis, where homicides are up nearly 50% this year, the Justice Department is sending 16 federal agents on temporary assignment for 90 days. That will be followed by the permanent deployment of 24 agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Homeland Security Investigations, the department said.In St. Louis, where last month 50 people were shot and killed, agents from the ATF, DEA, FBI and U.S. Marshals Service as well as 50 additional agents from the Department of Homeland Security will work with local police to combat gun and gang violence, the department said.Spike in larger citiesMajor American cities have experienced a spike in gun violence and homicides in recent months.New York City, the most populous U.S. city, has recorded an increase of 23% in homicides this year; Los Angeles, the No. 2 city by population, has seen murders rise by 14%; and Chicago has had 414 murders, an increase of 51%, according to police data released in late July.The exact driver of the recent spike in homicides in U.S. cities remains unclear. But criminologists cite several contributing factors. Among them are warm summer weather; more people on the streets as states reopen their economies; and a growing erosion of public trust in law enforcement amid the continued protests over the May death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.
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President Donald Trump huddled at the White House Thursday with the Senate’s top Republican over a vital COVID-19 rescue package, but hopes on Capitol Hill for a deal were souring and there was increasing worry that GOP negotiations with Democrats might collapse.The impasse in the negotiations is putting at risk more than $100 billion to help reopen schools, a fresh round of $1,200 direct payments to most people, and hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments to help them avoid furloughing workers and cutting services as tax revenues shrivel.Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a key player in the troubled talks and possesses far more experience than Trump’s administration negotiating team, which is publicly frustrated by the inflexible tactics of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The Democratic duo has not yielded much ground from an unprecedented $3.5 trillion House-passed rescue package.McConnell seemed to downplay the significance of the Trump meeting, telling a reporter merely that “we talked a little bit about everything.”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., joined by Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Aug. 6, 2020.And Pelosi and Schumer were still exuding confidence in a political and legislative landscape that’s tilted in their favor. Trump and McConnell both badly want an agreement, but Democrats control the House and may actually provide the lion’s share of votes in the Senate. The votes, as Pelosi often says, are the currency of the realm.The Democratic duo has stayed in sync throughout the talks — which they demanded — even reminding reporters Thursday that their relationship dates to Schumer’s time as a hard-charging House member in the 1980s and early 1990s.They say the federal coronavirus aid package needs to be huge in order to meet the moment: a surge in cases and deaths, double-digit joblessness, and the threat of poverty for millions of the newly unemployed.”We believe the patient needs a major operation while Republicans want to apply just a Band-Aid,” Schumer said. “We won’t let them just pass the Band-Aid, go home and leave America bleeding.”Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin arrives at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Aug. 6, 2020.After a Wednesday session that produced no progress, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were returning to Pelosi’s Capitol suite to confront the gulf in their negotiating stances. Both sides have set a goal of agreeing on a deal by week’s end — though that is appearing increasingly out of reach.The White House is also promising that Trump will attempt to use executive orders to address elements of the congressional package involving evictions and jobless benefits. But there’s no evidence that the strategy would have much impact or be anything close to what’s necessary, and Pelosi appeared unimpressed at a morning news conference.”I don’t think they know what they’re talking about,” Pelosi said dismissively.Addressing reporters, Pelosi and Schumer staked out a firm position to extend a lapsed $600-per-week bonus jobless benefit, demanded generous child care assistance and reiterated their demand for food stamps and assistance to renters and homeowners facing eviction or foreclosure.”Don’t nickel and dime our children,” Pelosi said. “Don’t say we want to give a tax break to a business lunch and not give more money for children to have food stamps.”Pelosi was referring to a GOP proposal to increase the deduction for business meals from 50% to 100%. The idea seems likely to die, along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut the Social Security payroll tax. But Schumer and Pelosi continue to push to restore a tax break for state and local taxes paid mostly by wealthier people with high incomes and valuable homes.McConnell, R-Ky., is likely to have to assume a higher profile if the talks are to come to a successful close, but he issued a grim assessment of the situation on Thursday, again complaining that Pelosi and Schumer are not negotiating in good faith.”Day after day, they’ve stonewalled the president’s team. Day by day, they’ve tried to invent new euphemisms to create the illusion of progress,” McConnell said Thursday.Frustration was palpable among Republican senators shuttling in and out of a GOP lunch session, some of whom say Schumer is intent on using the situation as a hammer against Republicans.”As long as they calculate that they’re better off politically doing nothing, it’s going to be hard for us to move forward,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. “And that’s the calculation they’ve made, it appears.”McConnell is sending the Senate home rather than forcing impatient senators to bide their time while Democrats play hardball. That suggests a vote won’t come until late next week or even after. Progress has been scant in the talks despite more than a week of negotiation.White House negotiators made some concessions on jobless benefits and aid to state and local governments in a Tuesday session — and then promptly got scalded by Republicans after details leaked out.But Pelosi, a sometimes imperious force whose experience in negotiations is far more extensive than Meadows, will likely have to make some concessions soon. Her dollar figure for aid to states and local governments far exceeds what independent experts such as Moody’s Analytics recommend, for example, and her position in favor of restoring the expensive state and local tax break is probably unsustainable.”She’s not going to allow the negotiations to collapse. She knows what the right moment is to pull the trigger and to try and close the deal,” said Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf. “But she also knows when to wait and to let the other side come to you.” 
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Spain’s former King Juan Carlos the First left his country this week as he faces possible accusations of financial wrongdoing.  The besieged monarch, who handed the crown to his son, Felipe, six years ago, is not formally under investigation.  In this report narrated by Jonathan Spier, Alfonso Beato in Barcelona reports the former king’s scandals – and his exile – have reignited questions on whether Spain should keep its monarchy.PRODUCER: Jon Spier
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U.S. Iran envoy Brian Hook is leaving his post and U.S. Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams will add Iran to his role “following a transition period” with Hook, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.
Hook’s departure comes as the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote next week on a U.S. bid to extend an international arms embargo on Iran. Some diplomats have said the measure lacks support.
Pompeo did not give a reason for Hook’s decision to leave. It was not immediately clear when Hook would finish, but the announcement comes at a crucial time for U.S. diplomacy on Iran.
If the United States is unsuccessful in extending the arms embargo on Iran, it has threatened to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions under a process – known as snapback – agreed in the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Some diplomats have suggested the United States will likely start the snapback process, which could take up to 30 days, by the end of August.
Abrams, a Republican foreign policy veteran, was named U.S. special representative for Venezuela in January of last year and has led a hardline approach aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
U.S. officials have said privately that President Donald Trump has been frustrated by the failure to remove Maduro, who retains the support of the Venezuelan military, as well from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.
 
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Another 1.2 million unemployed U.S. workers filed for government jobless compensation last week, the government’s Labor Department reported Thursday, as the unabated coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the American economy. It was the 20th straight week that more than a million people sought government assistance as the virus unrelentingly attacks communities large and small throughout the country, forcing employers to shut down their businesses or curtail their operations and lay off workers. But last week’s claims total was an improvement, 249,000 fewer workers seeking aid than the previous week, perhaps because a four-month boost in federal aid to the unemployed has, at least for the moment, ended.  Until last Friday, the U.S. was sending an extra $600 a week to the jobless workers on top of less generous state unemployment benefits. However, the federal payments expired at the end of July and so far this week the administration of President Donald Trump and opposition Democrats in Congress have been unable to reach an agreement on how long to extend the payments or how much the assistance should be. Republican lawmakers said they are looking to immediately cut the federal boost by two-thirds, to $200 a week, while saying they hope eventually to set the benefit claims at 70% of workers’ former wages. Democratic lawmakers want to keep the current $600-a-week extra payments through the end of 2020.  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, accompanied by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, leave a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as negotiations continue on a coronavirus relief package on Capitol Hill, Aug. 4, 2020.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows representing Trump have been negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer over the jobless benefits and other aid to boost the flagging U.S. economy that has been staggered by the coronavirus pandemic.  They have set a goal of reaching a deal by Friday but appear to be far apart on several issues. Trump said this week he will unilaterally impose terms of some continuing aid through an executive order if the negotiators cannot reach a deal.   A week ago, the Commerce Department said the American economy, the world’s largest, plummeted 9.5% between April and June, the biggest quarterly plunge in records dating back seven decades.   The three-month drop, combined with a 4.8% dip from January through March, officially dipped the U.S. economy into a recession as it struggles to regain its footing. The unchecked pandemic, with a surging number of new cases, has left more than 158,000 Americans dead and infected more than 4.8 million. It is estimated that more than 30 million U.S. workers remain unemployed, although not all are collecting assistance. Since March, 55 million people have collected unemployment insurance at one time or another. FILE – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, during a hearing on the Monetary Policy Report.Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell a week ago said the new surge in confirmed coronavirus infections poses new threats to the economy. Millions of workers have returned to their jobs but thousands of employers have also continued to lay off workers or pause reopening their doors as the virus spreads, particularly in such large states as Florida, Texas and California.    “On balance, it looks like the data are pointing to a slowing in the pace of the recovery,” Powell said. “I want to stress it’s too early to say both how large that is and how sustained it will be.”  Powell said some measures of consumer spending, such as debit card and credit card use, have fallen since late June when coronavirus infections jumped after easing in previous weeks.  He said labor market indicators signal slower job growth and that hotel occupancy rates have flattened. Powell said Americans are not going to restaurants, gas stations and beauty salons as much as they had been earlier this summer.  He said a full economic recovery depends on the country’s ability to control the virus, something it has been unable to do so far.  “A full recovery is unlikely until people are confident that it’s safe to engage in a broad range of economic activities,” Powell said.   Lawmakers have voiced support or opposition to a wide range of coronavirus economic aid proposals. Some want to send another round of $1,200 stimulus payments to most adults in the country, even as some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about the country’s ever-increasing national debt that now totals more than $26 trillion. Some lawmakers have called for incentive payments to returning workers, some of whom have collected more in unemployment benefits than from their earnings while working.   Trump, facing a difficult re-election contest in November against former Vice President Joe Biden, says he is open to continuing the jobless benefits at some unspecified level but wants to make sure they are not so high that they provide an incentive for workers to continue collecting the benefits rather than return to work if they have a chance to. Trump said recently the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. “will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better” but this week has said it will just disappear. He is predicting the economy will regain strength later this year and into 2021.   
   
The southern tier of U.S. states that had escaped the brunt of the pandemic in March and April has been particularly hard hit. Their governors reopened businesses — too soon, some now acknowledge — and younger people started socializing in public again at bars and restaurants without embracing such preventive practices as wearing a face mask or social distancing themselves from others by at least two meters.      
   
Now, some state governors are ordering these businesses shut down again. Investment bank Goldman Sachs said 70% of the country has either reversed reopening plans or delayed them.    
   
Key U.S. economic officials are predicting the country’s full recovery from the pandemic will take a lengthy period, extending well into 2021.      
   
The Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, has predicted that the U.S. unemployment rate, 11.1% in June, will improve to 9.3% by the end of 2020 and to 6.5% by the end of next year.     
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Facebook has deleted a post by President Donald Trump for violating its policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post in question featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus.
Facebook said Wednesday that the “video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”
A few hours later, Twitter temporarily blocked the Trump campaign from tweeting from its account, until it removed a post with the same video. Trump’s account retweeted the video. The company said in a statement late Wednesday that the tweet violated its rules against COVID misinformation. When a tweet breaks its rules, Twitter asks users to remove the tweet in question and bans them from posting anything else until they do.
Twitter has generally been quicker than Facebook in recent months to label posts from the president that violate its policies against misinformation and abuse.
This is not the first time that Facebook has removed a post from Trump, Facebook said, but it’s the first time it has done so because it was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. The company has also labeled his posts.
Several studies suggest, but don’t prove, that children  are less likely to become infected  than adults and more likely to have only mild symptoms. But this is not the same as being “virtually immune” to the virus.
A CDC study involving 2,500 children published in April found that about 1 in 5 infected children were hospitalized versus 1 in 3 adults; three children died. The study lacks complete data on all the cases, but it also suggests that many infected children have no symptoms, which could allow them to spread the virus to others.
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Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian journalist who has been jailed in her country since 2015 for human rights advocacy and who told supporters last month she was showing coronavirus symptoms, appears to have recovered from them, according to her husband.In a written message sent to VOA Persian on Tuesday, Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, living in exile in Paris, said the dangerous phase of his wife’s illness had passed. Rahmani said his wife had been at risk of serious health complications if the illness had spread to her lungs, which already had been hobbled by a preexisting disease.Rahmani first alerted the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran to Mohammadi’s illness July 7, saying he had learned that his wife and several of her female cellmates at Zanjan prison in northwestern Iran had been exhibiting coronavirus symptoms since the start of the month.Mohammadi later confirmed her symptoms in a letter that she sent from the prison to her supporters, who published it online July 13. In her letter, she also complained that prison authorities were refusing to inform her of the results of a coronavirus test that they gave her July 8.In his Tuesday message to VOA, Rahmani did not specify the date of his last contact with his wife or what communication method they had been using. There also was no word from Rahmani about the outcome of her coronavirus test.Mohammadi’s husband said she still needs specialized medical care outside of prison for her preexisting lung disease and weakened immune system following surgeries in 2018 and 2019, as well as for beatings that she received while being transferred to Zanjan in December.In a July 13 statement, Amnesty International said Mohammadi’s Iranian jailers had refused to let her receive outside medical treatment since they violently transferred her to Zanjan from Tehran’s Evin prison on December 24. The group said Iran’s deliberate denial of health care to the dissident may amount to torture.The organization also has said Mohammadi and other women held in Zanjan prison have been suffering from overcrowding, poor ventilation, filthy and insufficient bathroom facilities, and lack of adequate sanitary facilities and products to wash their dishes and clothes and maintain hygiene.“Zanjan prison is not a suitable place to keep her, because the pressures of its restrictive environment are too much for her to bear,” Rahmani said, in reference to his wife.He said the Iranian government appears to have two motives in keeping Mohammadi at the prison — taking revenge for her human rights work and frightening other activists into silence.Mohammadi was serving as a spokesperson for the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran when she was arrested in May 2015.Iranian authorities said she was detained to resume serving a six-year prison sentence from 2011 related to her peaceful work for the organization. However, they sentenced her again in May 2016 to a 16-year jail term for involvement with another peaceful advocacy group, the Campaign for Step by Step Abolition of the Death Penalty. Under Iranian law, the effective length of her sentence was reduced to 10 years.This year, Iranian authorities have filed several new national security-related charges against Mohammadi for her peaceful human rights activism inside prison. Those cases threaten to keep the 48-year-old dissident in prison even longer.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Click here for the original Persian version of the story. 
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Australia’s recent shift to a more combative stance against China will tighten political and military coordination among U.S.-allied nations that want to check Beijing’s maritime expansion, analysts said this week.Canberra broke its neutral stance toward China with harsh pledges and comments in May, June and July due to a series of problems with the communist government, despite brisk trade ties. In particular, Australia openly backed the United States last month by sending the United Nations a letter that described Beijing’s sovereignty claims in the contested South China Sea as illegal.Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested in a speech Wednesday that his country would work more closely with India, Japan and the United States – an ally already so close that a Chinese newspaper in May quoted a netizen calling Canberra a “dog” of Washington.Those four countries belong to a group dubbed the Quad, which formed in 2007 to discuss security issues in Asia, including China’s activities. Specialists predict more from the Quad, this time galvanized by Australia, even though the United States normally leads.“It appears at least from the Australian end that Australia is sort of trying to take a significant directive role rather than a follower role,” said Stuart Orr, professor of management at Deakin University in Australia.’Concrete action’On Wednesday, Morrison, addressing an Indo-Pacific security forum, noted the June Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with India. The partnership calls for meetings at least once every two years between defense ministers. Morrison added Wednesday that Australia reached a memorandum of cooperation in July to work with Japan on space cooperation and said Australia planned to take “concrete action to support our Pacific and Southeast Asian friends and family.” Japan and India have their own bitter territorial issues with China.The U.S. and Australian governments have cooperated for decades on resisting foreign governments that Washington dislikes. Now the U.S. side is embroiled in a trade dispute with China. Both Western countries resent China for suspected technology-related crimes and want the Asian country investigated as the source of the coronavirus.Australia proposed in May a formal inquiry into the Chinese origins of the pandemic and a month later Morrison said his country had been the target of a “state-based” cyber-attack. Beijing called the June remark a smear.Compared to other countries worried about Beijing, “I think Washington and Canberra are on the same page of the book about the problems with China,” said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.“I think that they have a much stronger sense of unity about confronting China in a smart way,” he said.None of the Quad countries claims the South China Sea, but all of them see it as a pivot point for Chinese expansion past its land borders and recall Beijing as a Cold War foe.Fish, energy reserves, shipping lanesChina vies for sovereignty over the contested sea with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. All five rival claimants have weaker militaries and less infrastructure on the sea’s hundreds of tiny islets than does China. Claimants prize the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea for fish, energy reserves and shipping lanes.Officials in Beijing cite historical usage records to defend their claim over about 90 percent of the sea.“China would at least have to be wary and at the same time it would have to be more concerned about Australia and the U.S. leading or sort of spearheading what they would likely see as rather unwelcome prospects of greater external interest and perceived meddling in the South China Sea,” said Collin Koh, a maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.India may hope to build up the Quad amid its military standoff with China near a disputed land border, London media organization India Inc. suggested in a commentary after Morrison met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Australia’s leadership role in the Quad could mean more joint naval exercises that anger China, scholars believe.Japan and Australia joined the USS Ronald Reagan and a strike group last month for joint exercises southeast of China.U.S.-Australia military exercises will gain speed, especially if they involve Japan, India, and traditional pro-U.S. European allies such as France and the United Kingdom, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.’Moral standpoint’Southeast Asian states, despite overlapping South China Sea claims with Beijing, have shown less enthusiasm than have Quad countries toward Australia’s new assertiveness. Some, such as Brunei and the Philippines, receive aid and investment from China. Their negotiating bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, hopes for an eventual maritime code of conduct with Beijing.However, they welcome the Quad’s activities from a “moral standpoint,” Koh said.Australia and Vietnam, the most outspoken maritime claimant, issued a joint statement last year to express “serious concerns about developments in the South China Sea, including land reclamation and militarization of disputed features,” a likely reference to Chinese activity.Expect Australia eventually to step up engagement with Vietnam, Thayer said.
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