One of the biggest heists in Brazil’s history occurred on Thursday afternoon when armed criminals disguised as police officers stole a huge trove of gold and other precious metals from São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. As Bloomberg News put it, the thieves stole $30 million in gold in less than three minutes.
China’s first major defense white paper in four years attracted considerable attention for its paranoia about “separatism.” One section of the paper extends that paranoia into space, where China claims the United States is attempting to attain “absolute military superiority” so it can dominate the entire world. The paper calls for China to develop the “relevant technologies and capabilities” needed to compete with the U.S. in space warfare.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during an interview on Thursday that he would “happily” visit Iran for negotiations and would love an opportunity to address the Iranian people directly.
The guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, the tenth such passage by a U.S. Navy ship this year.
Hundreds of protesters chanting “Free Hong Kong!” filled the Hong Kong International Airport on Friday, seeking attention from international arrivals and demanding a thorough investigation of last Sunday’s mob attack on activists at a train station.
Ukrainian state security forces detained a Russian oil tanker in the port of Izmail on Wednesday, seizing documents and questioning the crew before releasing them. Ukraine said the action was taken due to the Russian ship’s involvement in the November 2018 Kerch Strait confrontation, which ended with Russia seizing a Ukrainian ship and imprisoning its 24 crew members.
Controversial pro-Beijing Hong Kong lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu, who has supported violence against protesters, on Thursday called for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to prepare for military action to restore order in the city.
The first democratically elected president of Tunisia, Beji Caid Essebsi, died on Thursday at the age of 92. He was the third-oldest head of state in the world after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Malaysian President Mahathir Mohamad.
South Korea’s “Boycott Japan” movement is really taking off, according to reports that South Korean consumers are shunning everything from imported Japanese beer and snacks to vacations, cartoons, and pop stars.
A group of demonstrators blocked a train station for about 15 minutes during rush hour on Wednesday morning to call attention to Sunday’s savage beating of activists and bystanders by a gang of thugs. The demonstrators accused Hong Kong police and railway authorities of tolerating, or even enabling, the attack.
Financial Times innovation and technology editor John Thornhill on Monday touched upon the relationship between human values and computer algorithms by asking whether artificial intelligence will be shaped more profoundly by the values of the Western world or Communist China, which is pushing hard for a leading position in AI technology.
China released a national defense white paper on Wednesday painting the United States as a menace to global stability, identifying Taiwan as the “greatest immediate threat” to Chinese national security, and raising the possibility of military action against “separatists” like the protesters in Hong Kong.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that his agency has almost a thousand open investigations into intellectual property theft, almost all of them “leading back to China.”
News broke over the weekend that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the agency that took over domestic security after the dissolution of the KGB, was targeted by hackers over the past two months. The size of the data files posted online by the hackers suggests it was the worst data breach ever suffered by a Russian intelligence agency.
Brigadier General Ali Fadavi, a deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said in a speech on Tuesday that his organization is stronger than ever after the U.S. government designated it a foreign terrorist organization.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Tuesday that sanctions will be imposed on China’s Zhuhai Zhenrong Company and chief executive Youmin Li for purchasing Iranian oil in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
A report published by the Washington Post on Monday charged China’s telecom giant Huawei with secretly helping North Korea create and maintain its wireless network, possibly in violation of U.S. bans on the delivery of sensitive electronic equipment to the isolated Communist regime in Pyongyang. Another report from Czech Republic media accused the company of secretly harvesting personal information about its Czech customers.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan addressed a crowd of some 30,000 Pakistani-Americans in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, promising that under his administration a “new Pakistan” is “being created in front of your eyes.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Sunday that Iran’s arguments for seizing a British-flagged oil tanker on Friday are “much more right than those of Gibraltar and London, who are indulging in piracy.”
“The U.S. hostile measures against Iran are economic terrorism and Tehran will in no way hold talks with terrorists,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared from Venezuela on Sunday.
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu on Monday called for “genuine democratic elections” in Hong Kong, proclaiming democracy is the “only way forward” as the people of Hong Kong grow more alienated from their pro-Beijing government.
The first trailer for the upcoming sequel to “Top Gun” has been released, and a whiff of controversy has been detected in the apparent absence of patches representing the flags of Japan and Taiwan which adorned Tom Cruise’s hero character Maverick’s jacket in the 1986 original.
A report published Friday by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), an organization funded by the government of South Korea, showed that North Korea’s trade volume was cut in half during 2018, evidently as a result of sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.
National Security Adviser John Bolton is scheduled to visit Japan and South Korea next week, a trip seen in both countries as President Donald Trump’s effort to mediate the escalating feud between the two vital U.S. allies as nuclear diplomacy with North Korea resumes.
Two Iranian ships are stranded in Brazil because Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras refuses to sell them the fuel needed to return to Iran due to sanctions imposed against Iran by the United States.
After a week of insisting it merely assisted a vessel in distress by bringing it to a safe harbor, Iran on Thursday admitted its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States – seized a foreign oil tanker and took its crew prisoner.
The L.A. Times on Thursday documented how Hollywood studios owe former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden a few billion favors because he played a pivotal role in helping them gain access to the lucrative box office in China.
China’s state-run Global Times was very taken this week with formerly Republican representative Justin Amash’s (I-MI) diagnosis of American politics as sinking into a “partisan death spiral.”
Taiwan has been strongly supportive of the Hong Kong protest movement, and Hong Kongers appear to be returning the favor with surging support for Taiwanese independence.
The Chinese government this week launched what it describes as a voluntary security program in the southern city of Guangzhou by handing out 17,000 free smartwatches to elementary school children.
