Alexander Lukashenko, the only leader Belarus has known in its brief history, said on Friday that he will not be in power, for the first time in 26 years, once a new national constitution is adopted.
A court in Turkey on Thursday sentenced 475 defendants to lengthy prison terms, in many cases handing down multiple life sentences, in a mass trial for “traitors” accused of participating in the 2016 attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Iranian state media reported on Friday morning that top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near the capital city of Tehran by unidentified “terrorists” after a fierce battle with his security team. Fakhrizadeh was described as the “father of the Iranian bomb” in a famous 2018 presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never made a secret of his ambition to become a historic regional leader. His nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire long ago became a source of concern for observers who think he might seriously attempt to bring it back. His detractors mock him as “Sultan Erdogan,” but he might not find that name insulting. Erdogan flexed his military muscle in several recent conflicts. He might be warming up for something bigger, or he may have already overtaxed Turkey’s military strength.
While addressing a virtual summit of G20 nations on November 21, Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested the entire world should adopt a “QR Code” health tracking system similar to the one used in China. The suggestion, if adopted, would mark Communist China’s latest effort to gain political advantage from the pandemic it unleashed, and bring the free world one step closer to implementing China’s totalitarian “social credit system.”
The “Arab Spring” approaches its tenth anniversary – more specifically, the tenth anniversary of the event that triggered those uprisings across the Middle East, the death of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010.
China’s state-run media made numerous demands of President-Elect Joe Biden on Wednesday, demanding changes to U.S. policy on the South China Sea, the Indo-Pacific region, and Taiwan.
At a time when social media platforms boast of taking bold measures to suppress “hate speech” and “disinformation,” Catholic news website Crux reported on Monday that Twitter allowed thousands of tweets to be posted in Spain under the hashtag #FuegoAlClero, which means “Set Fire to the Clergy.”
A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State said on Tuesday that some 10,000 members of ISIS are still lurking in Iraq and Syria. With its numbers vastly diminished from their peak of over 40,000 fighters, ISIS has transitioned to an insurgency instead of a conquering army, but it remains a dangerous threat.
Open Media, a Russian Internet freedom news portal, reported on Tuesday that Moscow is preparing to implement a “social credit” system similar to the one used in China.
State wildlife officials using a helicopter to count sheep in a rugged area of remote Utah last week were surprised to discover a mysterious metal monolith sitting in the middle of nowhere.
Chinese officials are wooing Japan in hope of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the diminished trade deal established in 2018 as a successor to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
A spokesman for the Iranian government said on Tuesday that foreign companies are already inquiring about the possibility of doing business in Iran again after the Biden administration returns to the nuclear deal and lifts sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.
China claimed on Monday that it has completely eliminated “extreme poverty” from the entire country, formally removing nine rural counties from the list of 832 impoverished counties that was created in 2014.
The Russian Interior Ministry told state media on Saturday that it plans to create a national biometric database over the next three years that can identify both Russian citizens and foreign nationals using facial recognition, fingerprints, and genetic data.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this weekend asked the public to reconsider holiday plans and restrict travel to slow the spread of the resurgent Wuhan coronavirus.
The UK Guardian on Thursday published interviews with several of the almost 400 people imprisoned at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in Saudi Arabia in late 2017.
Chinese state media on Thursday derided the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance for daring to criticize China’s ugly crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, spraying extra venom at Australia, which the state-run Global Times sneeringly dismissed as a “vassal of the U.S.”
South Australia imposed an extremely strict coronavirus lockdown on Wednesday, attracting international attention when residents complained they were denied permission to walk their dogs.
World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a statement on Thursday denying allegations from the government of Ethiopia that he is secretly backing the Tigray rebels in his home country’s steadily escalating civil war.
The Australian Defense Force (ADF) released a report on Thursday detailing the results of a four-year investigation into alleged abuses by Australian troops in Afghanistan. The report found 39 unlawful killings were committed between 2005 and 2016 by Australian special forces soldiers, 19 of whom will now face criminal investigation and the potential loss of military honors.
The University of Michigan (U-M) released a gloomy report about growing Internet censorship on Tuesday, warning that even countries with high liberty ratings from human rights advocates like Freedom House are censoring Internet content with increasingly heavy hands.
Ethiopian Army Chief of Staff Berhanu Jula gave a televised address on Wednesday in which he denounced Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a longtime member of the Ethiopian government but currently head of the World Health Organization (WHO), as a “criminal” for supporting the Tigray separatists who are fighting against the government in Addis Ababa. Berhanu called on Tedros to step down from his position at WHO, which did not immediately respond to his allegations.
The Indian Army issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing media reports of China using “microwave weapons” against Indian troops in the Himalayas as “baseless” and “fake.”
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Wednesday that former Raytheon engineer Wei Sun has been sentenced to 38 months in prison for transferring sensitive missile technology to China in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping gave a lengthy teleconferenced address to the BRICS group of emerging economies on Tuesday, making a bid to restore and dominate what Chinese state media described as a tottering coalition riven by unreasonable animosity toward China from two of the other members, India and Brazil.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg responded on Tuesday to reports of a U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan by resolving to continue the NATO mission into its third decade.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday evening that he spoke to former Vice President Joe Biden by telephone to congratulate him on his reported victory in the 2020 presidential election.
China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday expected the prospective Biden administration to have more of an appetite for “multilateralism” than President Donald Trump, but lamented a skeptical American electorate and divided Congress will keep Biden from seeing things completely Beijing’s way.
China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday employed comments made by former President Barack Obama to pronounce doom on American society because the elites have become “fundamentally different” from “silent ordinary American people.”
