• US delegation urges deeper Beijing-Washington dialogue.
• China’s defence minister calls to remove disruptive factors.
• TikTok, tariffs are also on the discussion agenda.

BEIJING: The leader of a US congressional delegation to China warned Tuesday of the “risk of a misunderstanding” between the two countries’ militaries as advances in defence technology move at breakneck speed.

Adam Smith, the most senior Democrat on Washington’s Armed Services Committee, told journalists in Beijing that China needs to talk more about its military with other global powers “for basic de-confliction”.

“We’ve seen this with our ships, our planes, their ships, their planes coming entirely too close to one another,” he said at a news conference at the US Embassy.

“We need to have a better conversation about de-conflicting those things.”

The four-person delegation also includes other members of the same Armed Services Committee — Democrats Ro Khanna and Chrissy Houlahan — as well as Republican congressman Michael Baumgartner, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The group on Monday met Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun, with whom they talked about the importance of “working through our differences” and more candid dialogue, according to a statement from the US side.

Dong called on the visitors to “remove disruptive and restrictive factors” between them, China’s Xinhua state news agency reported.

Speaking on Tuesday alongside the other lawmakers and the US Ambassador to China, David Perdue, Smith said: “AI and drone warfare and cyber and space is moving so rapidly and innovation is happening so quickly.

“The risk of a misunderstanding of capabilities on one side or the other is great,” he said, adding the two sides need to talk so they “don’t stumble in any sort of conflicts”.

Tariffs and TikTok

The bipartisan congressional delegation comes just days after Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump spoke by telephone for the second time since the return to the White House of Trump, who has tried to keep a lid on tensions despite his once virulent criticism of China.

Trump said he would meet Xi on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea starting at the end of next month and that he would travel to China next year.

He said Xi would also visit the United States at an unspecified time and that the two leaders would speak again by telephone.

Both sides dramatically hiked tariffs against each other during a months-long dispute earlier this year, disrupting global supply chains.

Washington and Beijing then reached a deal to reduce levies, with the United States imposing 30% duties on imports of Chinese goods and China hitting US products with a 10% tariff. The deal expires in November.

Smith’s group on Monday held talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, in which they discussed the ongoing trade talks and the hot-button issues of fentanyl, critical minerals and the future of TikTok.

The White House has said a US version of TikTok would feature a homegrown model of the app’s prized algorithm, potentially clearing one of the main obstacles to keeping the Chinese-owned platform online in the United States.

Asked about the TikTok issue, Smith said: “My understanding is that I don’t think that has been 100% resolved.”

The delegation will also meet China’s National People’s Congress Chairman Zhao Leji and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

• Denmark’s Copenhagen Airport reopens after nearly four hours.
• Norway’s Oslo Airport reopens after nearly three hours.
• Investigation launched to determine what nature of drones.

COPENHAGEN: Copenhagen Airport, the busiest in the Nordic region, said it reopened early on Tuesday after drone sightings halted all take-offs and landings for nearly four hours, with Norway’s Oslo Airport also re-opened after it had shut its airspace over a drone.

“The police have launched an intensive investigation to determine what kind of drones these are,” Copenhagen Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jakob Hansen told reporters. “The drones have disappeared and we have not taken any of them,” he added.

Hansen said authorities in Denmark and Norway would cooperate to determine whether there was a link between the two incidents.

The airspace at Oslo airport in Norway was reopened by 3:22am (0122 GMT), a spokesperson for Norwegian airport operator Avinor said in a statement.

It had been shut since midnight (2200 GMT) due to a drone observation, with all flights diverted to the nearest airport.

Danish police said earlier on Monday that two or three large drones had been seen flying near Copenhagen’s airport, closing it to all traffic.

The airport halted operations at 8:26pm (1826 GMT) on Monday, according to flight tracking service FlightRadar. Around 50 flights were diverted to alternate airports, FlightRadar said on X.

After it reopened, Copenhagen Airport said on X that delays and some cancelled departures would persist and urged passengers to check with their airlines.

The airport shutdowns came after a string of disruptions at European airports in recent days.

A cyberattack last Friday knocked out check-in and boarding systems supplied by Collins Aerospace, a unit of RTX, affecting operations at London’s Heathrow and the Berlin and Brussels airports. Over the weekend and into Monday, the fallout continued to snarl travel across the region.

In 2018, drone sightings over the runway at Gatwick near London stranded tens of thousands of passengers and disrupted hundreds of flights at the height of the holiday season.

• White House vows to revolutionise health in US.
• Trump insists ‘taking Tylenol is not good.
• Paracetamol cited as among safest painkillers during pregnancy.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Monday vehemently insisted that pregnant people should “tough it out” and avoid Tylenol over an unproven link to autism, and urged major changes to the standard vaccines administered to babies.

The Republican leader’s announcement, rife with sweeping yet unsubstantiated advice, came as the White House has vowed to revolutionise health in the United States, and as experts across medicine and science voice broad concern over the administration’s initiatives that appear intent on unravelling decades of medical consensus.

Medical groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have long cited paracetamol — the primary ingredient in Tylenol — as among the safest painkillers to take during pregnancy.

But Trump, who hammered on his message in increasingly emphatic terms, insisted that “taking Tylenol is not good” and to “fight like hell not to take it.”

He said pregnant people should “tough it out,” and that only an “extremely high fever” would justify taking the over-the-counter medicine.

That’s not true: fever and pain can pose serious threats to both the mother and the developing foetus.

Arthur Caplan, the head of NYU’s medical ethics division, called Trump’s display “dangerous,” “unscientific” and “full of misinformation.”

“I worry that pregnant women are going to feel guilty if they took Tylenol. They’re going to feel they let down their babies. They’re going to feel that they were unethical in terms of trying to treat fever. That’s just not fair, and it’s not anything that anybody should be feeling,” Caplan told AFP.

Debate ongoing

The Food and Drug Administration was far more muted than Trump on the topic, saying in a letter to physicians that “a causal relationship has not been established” and that scientific debate was ongoing.

A literature review published last month concluded there was reason to believe a possible link between Tylenol exposure and autism existed — but many other studies have found an opposite result.

Researchers behind the August report cautioned that more study is needed and that pregnant people should not stop taking medication without consulting their doctors.

David Mandell, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP that research suggests the possible risks posed by taking Tylenol while pregnant seem “to be lower than the risk of having an uncontrolled infection during pregnancy.”

Anti-vax ‘threat’ to children

Identifying the root of autism — a complex condition connected to brain development that many experts believe occurs for predominantly genetic reasons — has been a pet cause of Trump’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy for decades has spread debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

On Monday he touted the drug leucovorin, a form of vitamin B first used to alleviate chemotherapy side effects, as an “exciting therapy” that could help children with the disorder whose symptoms vary widely across a spectrum.

The FDA on Monday said it was approving the drug’s tablet form to help a subset of children who have “cerebral folate deficiency.”

Vaccines were also on the rambling agenda of Trump’s conference.

He ardently repeated anti-vax movement talking points as top figures in the administration, including Kennedy, nodded along.

He sowed doubt over standard vaccines including the MMR shot — which covers measles, mumps and rubella — and implied he would end the common use of aluminium in vaccines, the safety of which has been widely studied.

And the president pushed for a major change to the routine vaccine schedule given to infants, insisting without evidence that there’s “no reason” to vaccinate newborns against the incurable, highly contagious Hepatitis B.

That statement stands in direct contradiction of broad medical consensus formed over decades. Many experts say the best way to prevent maternal transmission of the disease, which can cause liver damage and cancer, is to vaccinate babies within the first day of life.

Trump’s push comes days after an influential advisory panel handpicked by Kennedy stopped short of advising to delay the first dose of Hepatitis B vaccine by one month.

They deemed more discussion was necessary — offering temporary relief to many experts across public health who said postponing that shot could have dire results.

“Spacing out or delaying vaccines means children will not have immunity against these diseases at times when they are most at risk,” said Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Paediatrics, on Monday.

“Any effort to misrepresent sound, strong science poses a threat to the health of children.”