John Hayward - Page 202

Prince Abdullah bin Saud bin Mohammed was named president of the Saudi Marine Sports Federation in October. His tenure came to an abrupt end after three months on Wednesday, when he was sacked over his criticism of royal arrests seen by skeptics as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to consolidate power.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he said President Donald Trump “deserves big credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks” that were held this week.

The Iranian Association for Online Commerce stated on Monday that Internet controls installed by the authoritarian regime to suppress a popular uprising damaged “half a million online businesses, including several high-tech companies.”

The government of the Philippines announced on Tuesday that it would lodge a formal diplomatic protest with China over its construction of an airbase on the disputed Fiery Cross Reef, part of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Delegations from North and South Korea met at the border village of Panmunjom on Tuesday to discuss North Korea’s participation at the Winter Olympics and generally improving the tense situation on the peninsula. At the meeting, North Korea made an obvious play to fracture the international coalition aligned against its nuclear missile program and weaken South Korean resolve.

The Iranian government declared victory over the protest movement for the third time on Sunday, but the demonstrators keep coming back, and there are signs the regime is beginning to crack.

North Korea announced on Sunday that it will send a five-member delegation to talks in the border village of Panmunjom on Tuesday, the first formal contact between the two Korean nations in over two years.

The Iranian regime’s High Council of Education has declared English will no longer be taught in either public or private primary schools, in order to combat a “cultural invasion” from the Western world.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday, United States U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke in support of the Iranian protest movement, criticized the regime in Tehran for suppressing the free speech rights of its citizens, and said the world would be carefully watching as events continue to unfold in Iran.

Whether or not the protests in Iran are “dwindling,” as the regime insists and some foreign journalists reported, the uprising certainly has not been extinguished yet. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday that the world will be watching Iran as demonstrations against both the secular government and Islamic theocracy continue.

China’s Commerce Ministry announced on Friday that it will cap oil supplies to North Korea and ban imports of steel and other manufactured goods, in accordance with tougher U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear missile program.

Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer talked to Breitbart News Daily on Friday about the renewed investigations into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents and pay-for-play corruption allegations against the Clinton Foundation.

North and South Korea will hold high-level talks next week in the border village of Panmunjom to discuss both the upcoming Winter Olympics and how to “improve the two Koreas’ relations” more broadly, according to a statement from the South Korean Ministry of Unification on Friday.

The Iranian uprising seems to be subsiding after a week, in no small part due to violence unleashed by the two regimes in Tehran, plus an extensive program of suppression and sabotage on the Internet.

President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in decided in a phone conversation on Thursday to suspend joint U.S.-South Korean military drills during the 2018 Winter Olympics in a diplomatic overture to North Korea, which constantly complains about such exercises.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a press conference on Thursday that Japan’s security environment is “at its severest since World War II” because of North Korea, and he vowed to “protect the people’s lives and peaceful living in any situation.”

Vice President Mike Pence discussed the situation in Iran with Greta Van Susteren for Voice of America on Wednesday, then made a strong statement on Twitter in which he contrasted President Trump’s support for demonstrators with the “failure to support freedom in the last administration.”

The Moscow Times headlines its post “Russian Foreign Ministry Slams U.S. Over Iran Protests,” but the statement from spokeswoman Maria Zakharova is more of a sneer than a slam. Zakharova invoked Occupy Wall Street and the Ferguson riots to insinuate that America has no standing to criticize how the Iranian regime handles protests.

Signals from North Korea remain as difficult to read as ever. Wednesday brought news that dictator Kim Jong-un has ordered the reactivation of a hotline to South Korea that has been dormant for nearly two years, but also that he has ordered the construction of North Korea’s largest missile ever, with an eye towards launching it on the 70th anniversary of the Communist regime in September.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced support for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a Wednesday morning phone call, reportedly telling Rouhani his response to the uprising has been “appropriate” and expressing hope that the protests “will end in a few days.”

Defenders of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy have been having a very rough week as protesters flood the streets of Iranian cities to demand the end of the theocratic government Obama supported. They appear to be settling on a narrative that the nuclear deal was somehow working to reform the government Iranians are risking their lives to denounce, and President Donald Trump is frittering away that success by speaking out too strongly against the Rouhani and Khamenei regimes in Iran.

Two months after a sweeping series of arrests and temporary detentions made in connection with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s corruption probe, the fate of perhaps the biggest fish caught in the net remains uncertain: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the most wealthy, famous, and well-connected men in the world.

The BBC’s profile of Chinese President Xi Jinping is almost as lengthy as the one published by China’s state-run Xinhua news service, and it’s considerably flashier in its multimedia presentation style, but it’s also a good deal more skeptical. The BBC sees a vast cult of personality developing around China’s leader, nourished by the full power of the Chinese state. History has yet to provide an example of a cult of personality with a happy ending.

South Korea’s Yonhap News reported on Tuesday that Seoul has proposed high-level talks with North Korea next week, ostensibly to discuss North Korean participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The offer came after North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s intriguingly “conciliatory” annual address on New Year’s Day.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley made a statement on the uprising in Iran on Tuesday, giving strong support to the “brave people of Iran” and dismissing as “complete nonsense” the Iranian regime’s excuses for a crackdown.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered enthusiastic support for the Iranian people in their demonstrations against both the secular and religious governments of their country over the New Year’s weekend, while the United Nations and European leaders have remained conspicuously silent.

New Year’s Eve was met with celebrations in the streets of Mosul and a fireworks display, the first such revelry since the Islamic State captured the city four years ago.

President Donald Trump expressed support for “the great Iranian people” on Monday morning as reports confirmed that 12 people have been killed in the Iranian uprising so far.

President Donald Trump lashed out at Pakistan on Twitter just a few minutes past 7:00 a.m. Eastern time on New Year’s Day, expressing frustration at Islamabad’s inadequate efforts against terrorism and implying that U.S. foreign aid will be terminated as a result.

Free speech remained in a perilous state in 2017, as Big Tech became increasingly comfortable with censorship, applying inscrutable rules through enigmatic algorithms that looked an awful lot like old-fashioned political bias to outside observers.

King Abdullah of Jordan reportedly fired his brothers Prince Feisal and Prince Ali and his cousin Prince Talal on Friday, relieving them of important military posts.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tour of Africa seems to have paid off, as the energy minister of Chad announced an agreement to bring Turkish investors into his country’s oil market on Thursday.

A North Korean nuclear scientist who defected to China in early November reportedly killed himself when he was deported back to North Korea.

The Hong Kong Bar Association declared itself “appalled” on Friday by the Chinese parliament’s order to enforce mainland Chinese law inside a Hong Kong rail station, warning that the move would “severely undermine” the rule of law and rattle public confidence in Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” state of pseudo-independence.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Iran over the past few days, speaking out against both the “hardline” government of the ayatollahs and the supposedly “moderate” secular government of President Hassan Rouhani. “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to Rouhani” are chants heard in at least eight Iranian cities, and the movement appears to be spreading.

A squad of terrorist gunmen attacked the Mar Mina church in southern Cairo on Friday, killing between eight and ten people and wounding at least five more, according to various reports.