John Hayward - Page 17

North Korea claimed to launch its first nuclear attack submarine on Wednesday in a ceremony attended by a very excited Kim Jong-un.

hina is preparing to impose yet another in a long series of increasingly draconian “national security” laws, this time criminalizing anything that “undermines” China’s “national spirit” or “harms the feelings” of the country as a whole. Legal scholars quickly pointed out that such a vague and open-ended law would give every official in China’s vast bureaucratic army the power to punish anything that offends their personal sensibilities.

China’s current craze for apparel that makes young women look more appealing – and fertile – to potential suitors is taking a ribbing on social media from feminists, who think “good for marriage” fashion is just another transparent effort by the regime to arrest population decline.

The Pakistani military said on Wednesday that its border forces repelled an attack from a “large group of terrorists” from Afghanistan. The invaders attacked two Pakistani outposts in the Kalash valley using the “latest weapons,” which is how Pakistani officials often refer to the American equipment abandoned in Afghanistan during President Joe Biden’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal.

The congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), held a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the plight of Armenian Christians trapped by an Azerbaijani blockade in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. The commission heard testimony from experts who said Azerbaijan’s actions clearly constituted genocide, with complicity from Turkey and the Islamist forces it has dispatched into the region.

The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) suspended Gabon’s membership after a coup removed President Ali Bongo.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Wednesday that Chinese government officials have been ordered not to use Apple iPhones and other foreign devices for work, potentially inflicting a major blow on sales of those devices in China, whose titanic government bureaucracy employs a sizable portion of the population.

Indian police filed criminal charges against four journalists for allegedly “misrepresenting facts” about tribal conflicts in Manipur.

Ugandan police on Sunday announced the arrest of a suspect in connection with a plot to bomb a church in the capital city of Kampala. Five more arrests were announced on Tuesday, and more explosive devices were reportedly recovered, suggesting a major terrorist attack linked to an Islamist insurgent group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) had been thwarted.

Iranian media reported on Monday that the Mojhaye Khoroushan water park, one of the largest indoor water parks in the world, has been shut down because too many women were allowed to enter without wearing mandatory Islamic head coverings.

A mining convoy in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was attacked by unknown assailants, killing four, including two Chinese nationals.

A group of senior U.S. officials, including a deputy assistant secretary of state and the commander of the coalition against the Islamic State, visited Syria’s oil-rich Deir al Zor province on Sunday to manage a conflict between its Kurdish rulers and insurgent Arab tribes.

Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, the caretaker prime minister of Pakistan, told a state television audience on Friday that President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 unleashed a wave of terrorist attacks in the Pakistani border region – and some of those terrorists used American equipment abandoned by Biden.

A massive protest on Saturday in Niger’s capital city of Niamey drew tens of thousands of angry demonstrators who demanded France withdraw all of its forces immediately. France has been critical of the July 26 coup, but the public has demonstrated a great deal of support for the junta, and attitudes towards France soured even before the civilian government was overthrown.

China is now requiring religions to “support the leadership of the CCP, support the socialist system,” and teach dictator Xi Jinping’s ideology.

The army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday used force to disperse a protest against the United Nations in the eastern city of Goma, killing at least 43 people and injuring 56, plus 158 arrests.

Shi Zhengli, the “Bat Woman” of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is nominated for membership in the elite Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio dined on Fukushima seafood to show the fish are safe after the release of treated wastewater.

The United Nations on Tuesday issued a report on the brutal treatment of people forced to work in online and telephone scam centers across Southeast Asia.

China’s mad dash for coal power continues, even as Western governments tell their citizens to make more sacrifices for “climate change.”

Social media linked to Russia’s Wagner Group is circulating a video in which Yevgeny Prigozhin discusses rumors of his impending death.

Tendai Gambiza, a 33-year-old resident of Zimbabwe, forced his way into the Supreme Court building and threatened his ex-wife with an ax.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fatal plane crash might have been caused on purpose, but Russia will not allow an investigation measuring up to international standards to discover the truth.

Anti-government protests in the Druze region of Syria enter their second week with dictator Bashar Assad burned in effigy.

Facebook, which has rebranded its parent company as Meta, on Wednesday decided not to ban former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The FBI on Tuesday announced a successful multinational operation to take down a cybercrime ring known as “Qakbot.” The gang used an enormous botnet to spread ransomware through spam emails, inflicting hundreds of millions of dollars in damage on computer users around the world.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited Beijing on Tuesday and met with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng.

The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday suspended former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s conviction on corruption charges.

The county of Changshan in eastern China offers a “reward” of $140 for couples if the bride is 25 years old or younger.

Russian officials on Monday appointed Gen. Andrey Averyanov, head of covert offensive operations for Russian military intelligence, to supervise the mercenary Wagner Group’s valuable operations in Africa following the reported death of its founders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, in a plane crash last week.

The United States and Turkey held their largest joint military exercise in seven years last week, including Turkish F-16 fighters flying alongside American F-18s and a port call by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.

Tech billionaire Terry Gou, founder and former CEO of the Hon Hai Technology Group — more commonly known as Foxconn — on Monday became the fourth contestant in Taiwan’s January presidential election.

A Haitian gang opened fire on a church protest in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, killing at least seven people. Video showed bodies lying in the streets, plus several people who appeared to have been taken hostage by the gangsters.

China’s Evergrande Group took a horrifying $2 billion plunge in the Hong Kong stock market on Monday morning, losing 80 percent of its share value on the first day of trading after a 17-month suspension.

Massive graveyards filled with electric vehicles were discovered across China, ostensibly caused by the collapse of ride-sharing companies.

Vladimir Putin signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters in “volunteer formations” to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian flag.