
Pentagon leaders stoically followed along with President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Speech tonight, showcased as President Obama declared the United States “most powerful nation on Earth. Period.” and insisted “no nation dares to attack us” on a night that ten Navy sailors are spending captive in an Iranian prison.
by Frances Martel12 Jan 2016, 7:19 PM PST0

The Indonesia Film Censorship Board (LSF) has held an emergency meeting regarding Netflix’s recent global expansion and may ban the service from the country entirely.
by Frances Martel12 Jan 2016, 5:30 PM PST0

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has declared the National Assembly, the national legislative body, “void” following the swearing-in of a majority opposition legislature for the first time in 17 years.
by Frances Martel12 Jan 2016, 9:44 AM PST0

The pastor of an underground Evangelical church in Camagüey, Cuba, has denounced the communist government for leveling the building in which he holds religious services as a warning to others that openly practicing Christianity on the island will result in government persecution.
by Frances Martel12 Jan 2016, 7:55 AM PST0

North Korea’s state-controlled media appear to have begun a purge of high-ranking Chinese officials from their records, in a sign that relations between the two communist countries are at an all-time low.
by Frances Martel12 Jan 2016, 6:46 AM PST0

The Indian Museum in Kolkata has inaugurated an exhibition celebrating the worship of Hindu gods in Japan, a centuries-old tradition fueled by religious syncretism as Japanese worshippers have blended Hinduism into Buddhism and Shintoism.
by Frances Martel11 Jan 2016, 12:44 PM PST0

North Korea has begun its media victory lap over its alleged hydrogen bomb detonation last week, publishing an avalanche of exultant editorials praising dictator Kim Jong-un and publishing a photo of Kim with the nation’s leading nuclear scientists.
by Frances Martel11 Jan 2016, 10:39 AM PST0

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem will meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other high-ranking Indian officials on Monday in a renewed effort to garner international support for the dictatorship of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, particularly in Asia.
by Frances Martel11 Jan 2016, 8:37 AM PST0

CNN has published an interview this morning with Kim Dong Chul, a North Korean prisoner who claims to have U.S. citizenship and is pleading for the White House to help free him.
by Frances Martel11 Jan 2016, 6:57 AM PST0

The United Nations is vowing a “significant” response to North Korea’s claim that it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb earlier this week, despite years of economic sanctions and arm sales bans doing little to deter the rogue nation’s aggressive behavior.
by Frances Martel8 Jan 2016, 8:30 PM PST0

Venezuela’s new Vice President of Economics believes “inflation does not exist” and believes entrepreneurs are an “economic tumor” upon socialist governments. The hard-line socialist Luis Salas, a 39-year-old professor, is expected to exacerbate the nation’s already alarming finance woes.
by Frances Martel8 Jan 2016, 11:50 AM PST0

The Deputy Chair of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) told reporters he believes President Recep Tayip Erdogan has implemented “Wahhabi-Salafi policies” reflected in recent comments in defense of Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
by Frances Martel8 Jan 2016, 9:13 AM PST0

The Chinese government has dispatched diplomats to begin discussions with high-level officials in both South Korea and the United States regarding how to approach North Korea’s belligerent activity this week, including the detonation of a nuclear weapon the rogue state claims was a hydrogen bomb.
by Frances Martel8 Jan 2016, 7:46 AM PST0

Vietnam is preparing to deploy the first of six Kilo-class submarines purchased from Russia in the South China Sea, as a deterrent to China’s seemingly endless expansionism in the region.
by Frances Martel7 Jan 2016, 11:30 AM PST0

A group of about 30 men in camouflage bulldozed an active hospital in China this morning, destroying an estimated $600,000 worth of medical equipment and trapping doctors and patients inside.
by Frances Martel7 Jan 2016, 9:09 AM PST0

South Korea will resume propaganda broadcasts into North Korea on noon Friday – dictator Kim Jong-un’s birthday – likely to feature both criticism of the Kim regime and the South Korean genre of electro-pop known as K-pop.
by Frances Martel7 Jan 2016, 7:03 AM PST0

The Cuban government has begun feeding political prisoner Vladimir Morera Bacallao “against his will,” his wife says, more than 80 days since he began a hunger strike protesting his arrest for hanging an anti-communist sign on his window.
by Frances Martel6 Jan 2016, 11:04 AM PST0

A Venezuelan journalist and photographer were beaten in front of the National Assembly, the nation’s legislature, on Tuesday by a member of the nation’s Socialist Party (PSUV), as they tried to cover the swearing in ceremony for the new, opposition-run assembly.
by Frances Martel6 Jan 2016, 10:03 AM PST0

Chinese state news outlet Xinhua is reporting that the government has landed two more planes on a landing strip illegal constructed in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea, days after Vietnam and the Philippines filed a formal complaint over a similar incident.
by Frances Martel6 Jan 2016, 9:01 AM PST0

China has summoned the North Korean ambassador in ire over reports circulating last night that North Korea had detonated a hydrogen bomb, flagrantly violating international law.
by Frances Martel6 Jan 2016, 7:30 AM PST0

Kenya’s Garissa University officially re-opened on Monday, nine months after al-Shabaab terrorists stormed the campus, killing 148 people and deliberately targeting Christian students.
by Frances Martel5 Jan 2016, 7:30 PM PST0

Beijing will welcome the head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), an umbrella group of Syrian opposition groups, this week to discuss political solutions to the ongoing civil war in Syria.
by Frances Martel5 Jan 2016, 6:39 PM PST0

American and other Western volunteers fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria recently told the Kurdish outlet Rudaw they were gearing up for a new offensive against the jihadists in the new year. One American volunteer recalled how thousands demanded photos with him on a routine visit to a mall in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
by Frances Martel5 Jan 2016, 10:29 AM PST0

The government of Kuwait has become the latest to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran after a mob burned down the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran following the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr.
by Frances Martel5 Jan 2016, 7:00 AM PST0

As the White House begins to hint that President Barack Obama would like to visit Cuba before his term is over, a political prisoner freed and re-arrested due to the U.S.-Cuba “normalization” deal has lost cognitive functions as he struggles to survive his 87th day on a hunger strike.
by Frances Martel4 Jan 2016, 2:33 PM PST0