Officials in Beijing on Tuesday imposed a hefty fine on the producers of a stand-up comedy show that was deemed “offensive” for unspecified reasons. It was the first case in which Beijing’s increasingly popular comedy scene was punished for content violations.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto chief executive of Saudi Arabia, said in a televised interview Tuesday that he wants to improve relations with regional rival Iran.
Hong Kong officials announced Tuesday they would ban the annual June 4 Victoria Park vigil to commemorate the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square due to coronavirus restrictions. The vigil was banned for similar reasons in 2020.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears to have a strange love-hate relationship with filmmaker Chloe Zhao, alternately praising her achievements and using its censorship powers to suppress all mention of her Oscar wins on Sunday. It is hard to see why the CCP would decide to erase Zhao, who has not been a strident public critic of China’s authoritarian regime.
The customs agency for Beijing released data on Monday that showed trade with the United States increasing by 133.4% in the first quarter of 2021 to reach $12.5 billion. Total trade for the city with all partners was up by 8.8 percent from the pandemic year of 2020, and 1.9 percent higher than pre-pandemic totals in 2019.
In leaked audio of a March interview that evidently was not intended for consumption outside the Iranian regime, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif complained that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forced him to lie to the world about the downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet in January 2020.
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) said on Sunday it has asked Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to remove posts that create “panic” about the coronavirus surge in India by spreading “fake or misleading information.” Opposition politicians and international free speech advocates denounced the action as political censorship by the embattled government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Chinese state media on Sunday slammed the United States as “selfish” and “indifferent” for denying India the raw materials it needs to ramp up vaccine production.
Iranian officials claimed Sunday that Iran will begin mass-producing a homegrown coronavirus vaccine within the next month, delivering up to 3.5 million doses by the end of June and 50 million by the end of September.
China’s state-run Global Times on Sunday touted the participation of the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) at China’s first International Consumer Products Expo, scheduled for May 7-10 in the city of Haikou. The Global Times suggested the event will give the NBA an opportunity to repair its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after Houston Rockets manager Daryl Morey expressed support for the Hong Kong democracy movement in 2019.
The tempo of Taliban bombings in Afghanistan is increasing as the United States prepares to withdraw its forces in September, including a Monday rocket attack on the governor’s compound in Kunar province that killed at least 16 children during a religious ceremony.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Thursday that more than 500 federally funded scientists are currently under investigation for possible ties to China and other foreign powers.
The United Nations bizarrely elected Iran, one of the most violently misogynistic governments in the world, to a four-year term on its Commission on the Status of Women on Monday. The vote elicited swift condemnation from human rights activists.
The Russian defense ministry announced Friday it has begun withdrawing troops and equipment from Crimea, having completed a “snap inspection” and supposedly innocuous military drills.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is fluent in globalist rhetoric, including the language of the environmentalist movement, but in reality it remains the gravest threat to the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday attacked World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for urging further investigation into the possibility that a laboratory leak in Wuhan was the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iranian state media on Thursday claimed Wednesday evening’s missile attack on Israel was a success and the weapon struck its intended target, contrary to reports from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), told his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday the UAE will roll over a $2 billion loan and “extend every possible support” in an effort to improve relations between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned other nations not to cross Russia’s “red lines” in his 17th annual state of the union address, delivered to the Russian parliament Wednesday.
Two current and six former staffers from AIUK, the United Kingdom branch of Amnesty International, issued a statement Tuesday complaining senior management “knowingly upheld racism and actively harmed staff from ethnic minority backgrounds.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that dictator Xi Jinping has accepted U.S. President Joe Biden’s invitation to attend a virtual climate summit on Thursday, April 22, which Western environmental activists commemorate as Earth Day.
China’s state-run Global Times on Monday offered support to Russia and its authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin, musing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a “geopolitical disaster” for which the West has never offered Moscow sufficient condolences.
Reporters Without Borders, commonly known by its French acronym RSF, published its annual report on press freedom Tuesday. The 2021 edition found press freedom in decline around the world and said “China continues to be the world’s biggest jailer of press freedom defenders.”
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said Tuesday that India must continue exporting coronavirus vaccines despite mounting infections and vaccine shortages at home because of the need to maintain “global supply chains.”
In his keynote speech to the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference on Tuesday, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping talked about his plans to use the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to impose China’s vision of universal “rules and standards” on the world, permanently displacing the United States and Europe as the leading global powers.
Chinese telecom company Huawei rolled out a major program to build self-driving cars on Sunday, seeking a leadership position as a supplier for new the AI-driven market even as international distrust for its telecom and Internet services weakens the massive corporation’s existing business model.
Police opened fire on a crowd of protesting workers at the construction site of a Chinese-financed power plant in southeastern Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.
Russian prison officials said Monday that dissident Alexei Navalny has been moved to a prison hospital to receive “vitamin therapy” for his ailing health. Navalny’s physician, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said his patient could “die at any moment.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday opposed Japan’s proposed release of contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima reactor and suggested shipping the radioactive waste to the United States instead.
Dr. Francesco Zambon, formerly a senior employee of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), accused W.H.O. on Wednesday of forcing him to change a report on Italy’s early response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Chinese state media reported on Tuesday that Chinese mRNA coronavirus vaccines will enter Phase III clinical trials in May and will be ready to ship 120 million doses by the end of the year.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani held a fiery cabinet meeting on Wednesday in which he railed against suspected Israeli sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility and vowed to increase uranium enrichment even further.
Chinese state media on Monday mocked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for sending “mixed messages” and bungling the Biden administration’s China policy, which is supposedly torn between rational recognition of China’s new global power and the need to “keep a hardline stance to respond to domestic anti-China consensus.”
Muslims around the world are beginning to celebrate the second Ramadan holy month of the pandemic era, once again seeking to navigate different lockdowns and social distancing requirements in various countries, plus economic travails and factional conflicts exacerbated by the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on Tuesday recommended a ban on the sale of live wild animals at food markets.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prepared for its 100th-anniversary celebration in July by setting up a hotline for citizens to report “historical nihilists” who dare to complain about the Party online.
China’s top national health officials on Sunday chastised local authorities for pushing too hard with mandatory vaccination orders and “compulsory for all” methods, which a spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC) deemed “inappropriate.”
Chinese regulators hit e-commerce giant Alibaba with a staggering $2.78 billion fine for alleged antitrust violations Saturday, seizing about four percent of the company’s annual revenue with the largest corporate penalty the Chinese government has ever assessed.
Vice Media on Sunday removed an article featuring digitally altered photos of Cambodian genocide victims with smiles on their faces after complaints from the Cambodian government and a petition to demand an apology from the media organization.
Kurdish Gen. Sirwan Barzani warned in an April 6 interview updated Monday that the Islamic State is “coming back with a vengeance” in Iraq, and while ISIS is currently focused on guerrilla fighting and terrorist attacks on civilians, it aspires to “make a powerful comeback” and once again control territory as a caliphate.
