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The U.S. State Department and Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Beijing next week. According to the State Department, Blinken will depart for a trip to both China and the United Kingdom on June 16, expected to culminate on June 21. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claims Blinken will stay in China for two days, June 18 and 19. The Chinese government, through its state media arms, had dismissed an upcoming visit from the secretary of state as a rumor as recently as last week.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday in which the latter chided Blinken to “stop trying to put up new obstacles to bilateral relations.” The State Department readout of the call, published on Sunday (the call appears to have taken place on Monday Beijing time), does not mention anything that Wang said, instead focusing on Blinken, who allegedly “raised Russia’s war against Ukraine” and the “security situation in Haiti.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the government, through state propaganda outlet Global Times, offered much more specificity, depicting a...

Ahead of his meeting with Britain’s prime minister Thursday, President Biden’s aides were scrambling to deny a report that he ordered the scolding of Boris Johnson’s government over Northern Ireland policy. “He didn’t come here to give a lecture,” Biden aides told reporters on a press call ahead of the Biden-Johnson meeting, according to a report. “It will not be controversial or adversarial,” the official said, the Daily Mail reported. The Post was not invited to join the call. Biden will tell Johnson “what he has said publicly for a long time now,” the aide said.

We sympathize with those voters who feel locked out of a political system that seems closed-off, self interested and remote. We hear every week from readers who feel Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is their best chance to demolish a crony system that isn’t even interested in their concerns, much less committed to addressing them. These are two, distinct issues to consider, even though in the heat of the moment they might seem of a piece. First, yes: Many of us are so removed from the workings of the federal government that we don’t even know where to begin to...

It’s one thing for Mayor Bloomberg to play nanny and hector New Yorkers about smoking and trans fats, as he never stops doing. But it’s quite another for him to grab the flag and start scolding foes of that planned mosque near Ground Zero, as he did Friday. The mayor was way, way out of line. “A handful of people ought to be ashamed of themselves,” he huffed. Well, we know one person who should be ashamed: him. Bloomberg got downright apocalyptic, calling the controversy “[as] important [a] test of the separation of church and state . . . as...

In an unusually blunt address to the Legislature on Wednesday, Gov. David A. Paterson chastised the lawmakers before him, saying they had spent the state into near fiscal ruin and stood by as a plague of political corruption destroyed New Yorkers’ trust in government. Dispensing with the ritualized flattery that typically precedes the annual State of the State address, Mr. Paterson warned, in sometimes biblical tones, that lawmakers faced a political and financial reckoning if they did not act quickly to repair New York’s finances and restore citizens’ faith in public officials. “You have left me and other governors no...

Senator Barack Obama defended mailers sent out to Ohio voters last week on Hillary Clinton’s NAFTA and health care records, after Hillary Clinton scolded him for distributing them.

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

Go ahead, Californians, it's your legal right to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - unless it makes you fat or skins your knee. Critics say that's the message being sent in a slew of state bills targeting everything from soda pop in public schools to cellphone talk in private cars. Assemblyman Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, calls it "nanny government" - an insatiable appetite by legislators to replace parents in deciding what's best for families. Many of the controversial proposals are aimed at minors, including bills to keep them from buying violent video games, tanning at indoor salons or...

When parents are driven mad by badly behaved children, most do not smack them and instead give them a telling-off. But verbal abuse could be as harmful as beating, according to new Danish research. Psychologists have long known that children who have been beaten are prone to low self-esteem and insecurity in later life. Little research has been done, though, into the effects of scolding. "The feeling of self-respect is hurt when you are punished in one way or another," said Erik Sigsgaard, the researcher into teaching at the Danish Center for Research in Institutions, who carried out the study....