The Chinese government has published its semi-annual human rights report on the United States, condemning America for a variety of alleged “human rights violations” which include widespread gun ownership, “angry” voters in the 2016 elections, and “gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty.”
Hamell Santiago Maz Hernández, a Cuban dissident awaiting trial in the nation’s most notorious maximum security prison on a charge of “disrespect” for the Revolution, died of mysterious circumstances in late February. Now, fellow dissidents at the prison fear eating government-issued food, worried that the government poisoned their colleague.
A Chinese state propaganda outlet has threatened to make South Korea “feel the pain” for proceeding with the installation of an anti-North Korea missile system, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi predicts an imminent “head-on” collision between Pyongyang and Washington.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s office has announced the official commutation of sentences for 27 prisoners deemed too ill or elderly to justify keeping in prison, the first of what the president’s office hopes will be more than 100 such pardons.
Thousands of women in Nigeria took the streets of the northern capital Maiduguri this weekend to protest the government’s inability to eradicate the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, which has not ceased in committing mass abductions, rapes, and murders since the government claimed victory over them in 2015.
A priest in Venezuela has requested that Christians in his country separate their food waste from other garbage and label it to help starving Venezuelans find waste to eat without having to dig through noxious inedible garbage.
Cuban dictator Raúl Castro has publicly condemned major policy initiatives in U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the “irrational” call to build a wall on the southern border and “extreme” and “selfish” trade policies that would benefit American workers.
A militia the Associated Press identifies as a coalition of “Islamic militants and former rebels” has seized two major oil ports in Libya and threatened to take the nation’s second-largest city, Benghazi, out of the hands of the secular, internationally-recognized government’s allied military force.
Multiple reports in South Korean and Japanese news outlets suggest Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be visiting Asia as early as next weekend, seeking to unite South Korea, Japan, and China in cooperation against a growing North Korea threat.
The Cuban anti-Communist group Ladies in White reports at least 50 of its members were arrested this weekend following a mob attack on their headquarters in Havana, in which the dissidents were forced to hide as the mob hurled large stones into the building.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) announced the launch of Operation “Double Barrel Reloaded,” the next phase in a highly-controversial drug war that its critics say has left thousands dead without due process.
During the 25th meeting of its Congress this weekend, the Socialist International condemned the “systematic violation of human rights” under socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, demanding Maduro “free all political prisoners” and cease restricting the powers of the opposition-controlled legislature.
The government of Vietnam has condemned China for imposing a fishing ban over its territory in the Paracel Islands, a South China Sea archipelago that China illegally claims as its own.
The situation in Libya since dictator Muammar Qaddafi died in 2011 remains fractured and volatile for domestic and foreign interests alike. Following the news that oil smugglers had seized a Turkish tanker on its way to Malta Thursday, Reuters reported that the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB), a rebel militia, had captured two of the nation’s few remaining productive oil ports.
The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed a chemical weapons attack targeting women and children in Mosul, Iraq, this week — likely an Islamic State operation intended to slow the liberation of its regional capital.
The Chinese Communist Party has commanded travel agencies not to book tours to South Korea and appears to have blocked South Korean entertainment, including popular television dramas, in response to Seoul’s accelerated moves to install a missile defense system that can reach into China.
Turkish prosecutors are accusing Islamic State terrorists of establishing a training school within an office building in Ankara, where supporters would take their children for indoctrination instead of legal, government-run secular schools.
The government of Venezuela has little over $10 billion of foreign reserves cash, CNN reports, suggesting it will soon run out of funds completely. The nation’s socialist government has vowed not to default on its debts but has done little to stop the rapidly growing hyperinflation and spread of poverty and hunger.
Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro appears to be attempting to ingratiate himself with his American counterpart Donald Trump, praising the president’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday as “the first time I hear a U.S. president speak of the struggle against drug trafficking.”
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated his belief that killing drug criminals was necessary to protect his nation’s youth from the methamphetamine addiction engulfing the Philippines, declaring that killing such criminals is “not a crime against humanity.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry warned that Ankara would not hesitate to bomb the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) should it seek to remain in the city of Manbij following the eradication of the Islamic State from that area. The YPG has been a longtime American ally, and the Pentagon is working to assert that it does not pose a threat to Turkey.
The Colombian government announced Wednesday that it had approved for an amnesty and rehabilitation program four members of the Marxist terror organization FARC, the beginning of the implementation of a peace deal expected to allow 4,500 terrorists to reintegrate into society.
China’s top diplomat, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, completed a visit to the United States this week after reportedly discussing the economy and foreign policy with both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Chinese state-run publication Global Times warned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump was leading the United States into “political chaos,” making the expansion of globalization – and international Chinese influence – necessary for global stability.
The animal advocacy organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has dispatched a troupe of “lettuce ladies” – scantily-clad vegan women wearing bikinis made out of lettuce – to Havana to lecture impoverished Cubans against eating meat.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), currently chaired by the Philippines, is aspiring to debut a new maritime code of conduct by June intended to diminish tensions between member nations and China in the South China Sea.
During his address to a special joint session of Congress Tuesday, President Donald Trump vowed to use his position as commander in chief to eradicate the Islamic State terrorist group and work with America’s “friends and allies in the Muslim world” to combat radical Islamic terrorism.
As the international community continues to grapple with how to properly reduce the global risk of an emboldened and increasingly erratic North Korea, South Korea warns that dictator Kim Jong-un appears to have completely overhauled his intelligence agency.
Archaeologists have reportedly found the ruins of a palace dating back to 600 BC deep under the ruins of the tomb of the Prophet Jonah in northern Iraq. The Islamic State had destroyed the tomb and dug tunnels underneath, revealing the as-yet-undiscovered ruins.
Numerous articles in Chinese state-controlled media are encouraging Chinese nationals to boycott the Lotte Group, a South Korean conglomerate that recently approved a land deal making the deployment of a new U.S. missile defense system in the country possible.
In confirming the death of Jurgen Kantner, the hostage to the Islamic State affiliate Abu Sayyaf beheaded overnight Sunday, the Philippine government revealed that multiple soldiers had died to prevent his murder, but their rescue attempts failed.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the war against the Islamic State and a plan to curb Syrian Kurdish influence with the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG) Masoud Barzani over the weekend.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) General Joseph Votel made an unannounced visit to Syria last week to meet with the heads of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a militia fighting the Islamic State largely composed of Kurdish fighters.
Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi will arrive in the United States Monday for a two-day visit at the behest of the Trump administration. Yang will be the highest-ranking official from Beijing to visit the White House since Trump assumed the presidency.
In what many observers are deeming an embarrassing rebuke of human rights activism on the island, the Communist Party of Cuba refused to allow Organization of American States (OAS) head Luis Almagro and former Mexican president Felipe Calderón enter the country.
Rafael Correa, the socialist President of Ecuador, is threatening to use an obscure federal rule to dissolve both the executive and the legislature should pro-freedom center-right candidate Guillermo Lasso win the nation’s presidency in an April run-off vote.
The New York Times published a full-page open letter by Venezuela’s Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, on Wednesday, condemning the U.S. Department of the Treasury for sanctioning him as an official “Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker” for his ties to drug organizations.
North Korea has lashed out against its most prominent ally in the international community, China, in a commentary decrying its “friendly neighbor” for adhering to United Nations sanctions and halting the import of coal from the communist hermit kingdom.
Turkey has called Iran’s outrage over its foreign minister’s warnings that Tehran is seeking to establish Shiite states in Iraq and Syria “incomprehensible,” as Ankara attempts to mend an alliance centered on fighting the Islamic State.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a German newspaper Tuesday that his government is “ready to send ground troops” to fight the Islamic State in Syria if necessary.
