Insults fly as Biden locks horns with Russia and China

President Joe Biden is suddenly waging a bitter two-front confrontation with America's foe in the last Cold War -- Moscow -- and the US adversary in a possible next one -- China.

Nasty personal insults are flying between the White House and the Kremlin even as staggeringly blunt rhetoric erupts in the administration's first big talks with China called to lay down the law on Biden's tough new policy toward the dominant Asian power. A remarkable day of intercontinental squabbling confirmed that US relations with China have plunged to their lowest point since President Richard Nixon's pioneering mission to "open" the then-isolated communist state in the 1970s. US-Russia ties are, meanwhile, at their most difficult point since the fall of the Soviet Union.