Sweden and Turkey announced large discoveries of rare earth minerals this month. Sweden’s discovery in particular could be a major step toward breaking Chinese dominance in the rare earth industry.
North Korean state media on Monday denounced NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to South Korea as a “prelude to confrontation and war.” During his visit, Stoltenberg urged South Korea to “step up to the specific issue of military support” for Ukraine.
China’s state-run Global Times on Monday called for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate the undercover Project Veritas video that caught a Pfizer executive talking about intentionally mutating coronavirus strains to develop new vaccines.
Philippine lawmaker Stella Quimbo told an agriculture committee hearing on Thursday that secret cartels could be responsible for the sky-high price of onions, which cost about 457 percent more than the global average in the Philippines.
Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) on Thursday published a report about a pro-China entity known as “Dragonbridge” or “Spamouflage Dragon” that flooded YouTube and other platforms with tens of thousands of messages last year.
Haitian police rioted in the capital of Port-au-Prince on Thursday, blocking streets, burning tires, vandalizing vehicles, and attacking the residence of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The Nigerian military announced on Thursday that its anti-piracy operation destroyed 39 illegal oil refineries over the past two weeks, recovering large quantities of stolen oil along with vehicles and weapons used by the thieves.
India used its 74th Republic Day celebration to showcase domestically-produced weapons, even replacing the old British guns used for the traditional 21-gun salute with indigenously-produced 105mm field guns.
Ethiopia’s Addis Standard on Wednesday reported that dozens of civilians have been killed in clashes in the Oromo Special Zone of the Amhara region.
Chinese officials claimed on Thursday that coronavirus fatalities have dropped by almost 80 percent since the beginning of January, indicating the vast wave of infections sweeping the country is quickly coming to an end.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday held a commissioning ceremony for the first of four massive oil rigs operated by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encountered a group of protesters who denounced him as a “tyrant” and “traitor” while attending a Liberal Party cabinet retreat in Hamilton, Ontario, on Tuesday night.
Hundreds of people turned out in Lusaka, Zambia, on Tuesday to attend the funeral of Lemekani Nyirenda, a 23-year-old engineering student recruited by Russia’s infamous Wagner Group of mercenaries and killed while fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
The Indian government is extremely unhappy with a BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – so unhappy that the government cut power to a university attempting to screen the film and ordered social media giants Twitter and YouTube to block attempts to share it.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on Monday called for “immediate and coordinated action” after more than 300 children in seven countries were killed by contaminated cough syrup last year.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday demanded the formation of an international peacekeeping force to combat gang violence and restore stable government in Haiti.
The U.S. is already facing a shortage of prescription drugs, and industry analysts said this week it could become much worse due to China’s massive coronavirus outbreak, which is both increasing Chinese drug consumption and reducing output from manufacturers.
The strange saga of the Filipino onion – a humble vegetable transformed into a priceless treasure by a combination of high demand, supply problems, and imbecilic government policies – took another turn on Saturday when blushing bride April Lyka Biorrey walked down the aisle with a bouquet of onions instead of flowers. By all accounts, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Chinese state media reported on Sunday that the big Lunar New Year holiday week was a smashing success at theaters, which reported a huge surge in profits following the termination of coronavirus lockdown policies.
Chinese state television aired a Spring Festival holiday gala on Saturday night that included a skit mocking lazy and incompetent low-level bureaucrats.
At a press briefing on Friday, White House National Security Council (NSC) communications director John Kirby accused North Korea of supplying ammunition to invading Russian forces in Ukraine.
Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio told his parliament on Monday that reversing Japan’s demographic death spiral is a top priority for his administration.
Taiwanese Foreign Ministry Joseph Wu told Sky News on Wednesday that China is growing “more likely” to invade as Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s domestic problems grow more serious.
Saudi Arabian Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said on Tuesday that his government is willing to consider alternatives to the U.S. dollar for international trade.
Police in Moscow arrested four people on Tuesday for attending a spontaneous memorial to the Ukrainian civilians killed by a Russian missile strike on their apartment building in Dnipro Sunday.
China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday jumped into President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal by pointing to the difference in how Biden and former President Donald Trump were treated as proof that “justice, fairness, and the rule of law are worthless in U.S. politics.”
China’s Ministry of Transportation reported on Saturday that over 42 million people have traveled by car, train, ship, and plane during the early days of the long Lunar New Year travel season, and over two billion trips will have been taken by the time the holiday is done, even though a massive wave of coronavirus infections is raging across China.
Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York on Friday dropped their charges against Baimadajie Angwang, an NYPD officer and former U.S. Marine who was accused of reporting to Chinese officials on the activities of fellow ethnic Tibetans living in the United States.
Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned on Tuesday after the Communist Party blamed him for “violations and wrongdoing” by officials in his administration.
Chinese Communist Party propagandists on Monday rushed to embrace the spirit of the World Economic Forum (WEF), held annually in Davos, Switzerland.
India’s power ministry is projecting an eight-percent surge in coal demand during the next fiscal year after renewables underperformed by nearly 30 percent in 2022, while India’s imports of discounted Russian oil surged by an amazing 33 times year-on-year in December.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a Sunday bomb attack on a Pentecostal church in the eastern Kasindi province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC military confirmed 14 deaths and 63 injuries as of Monday morning.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been working on a political comeback ever since he was kicked out of office with a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April 2022, notched a victory on Monday by securing a snap election in Punjab, whose population of 110 million makes it the largest of Pakistan’s provinces.
The government of Uganda on Thursday terminated a Chinese company’s contract to build a major railroad to Kenya and is now considering a replacement deal with a Turkish firm.
China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday unloaded a pair of hit pieces on the new Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Filipinos visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are packing their suitcases with an unusual souvenir: onions. Filipino cooking uses a lot of onions, and inflation is making them unaffordable back home, but the UAE sells them for a fraction of the price.
The Taliban cannot keep the people of Afghanistan fed and clothed without massive international humanitarian aid, which they might not be getting for much longer if they keep oppressing women, but somehow the junta found time and resources to design and build a prototype “supercar” called the Mada 9.
China’s trade deficit with Russia tripled in 2022, a report revealed on Friday, thanks in part to skyrocketing energy prices that made Russia’s discounted oil and gas irresistible to Chinese buyers.
NPR reported on Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party is quietly, but relentlessly, rounding up and imprisoning people it sees as ringleaders in the huge nationwide protests against dictator Xi Jinping’s coronavirus lockdowns.
Former Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was among the Communist regime’s most aggressive, and frequently offensive, spokesmen, trafficking in all sorts of deranged conspiracy theories and slander against China’s adversaries.
