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.
For the second time in less than a week, a Russian nuclear power plant was taken partially offline on Thursday after a malfunction. The new incident involved the Kalinin nuclear plant, located a little over 200 miles northwest of Moscow, which shut down three of its four generators after a transformer short-circuited.
China’s state-run media sputtered with outrage over Monday’s installment of the Australian television program Four Corners, which looked at the massive re-education camps China has established in Xinjiang province to hold a sizable portion of its Muslim population. China slammed the report as “deplorable” and “cold-blooded,” by which it meant the Australian team overlooked all the wonderful things Beijing is doing for the Uighur people.
Iran’s manic swings between blaming U.S. sanctions for its economic woes and demanding immediate rescue from the Europeans, and dismissing those sanctions as an irrelevant trifle, continued on Wednesday as Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani insisted President Donald Trump has completely failed to intimidate Tehran.
South Korea’s feud with Japan continued escalating on Wednesday with reports that two Japanese military attaches have been deported for allegedly stealing confidential information about North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korean retail outlets are beginning to boycott Japanese goods and shoppers are turning away from Japanese imports.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday congratulated Pakistan on the arrest of Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization and alleged mastermind of the brutal 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed 164 people.
China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday quoted speculation by a Chinese aerospace expert that Beijing could put a man on the moon by 2035.
Demonstrations continued in Hong Kong with at least three events planned for this week, including a march by elderly people determined to show that not just hotheaded young students are opposed to the controversial extradition law.
Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the United States, said on Tuesday the two countries are in discussions to strengthen their 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed on Tuesday that Iran will continue violating the nuclear deal until European powers meet Tehran’s demands.
President Donald Trump will send a U.S. delegation to arms control talks in Geneva this week with Russia that could lay the groundwork for a trilateral agreement including China.
China appears to be experiencing a dip in marriage rates very similar to the one observed in Western societies years ago, and for much the same reason: young urban professional Chinese are putting off marriage because living alone has become more affordable, and they wish to defer marriage until they find the ideal mate.
The U.S. State Department has reportedly granted a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif so he can attend a meeting this week at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that Iran is prepared to deal with the U.S. government if sanctions are lifted – a statement intended to make Iran look reasonable, even though it has demanded an unconditional end to sanctions as a precondition for negotiations many times in the past.
China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday that another Canadian citizen has been arrested, this time on drug offenses. The Canadian foreign ministry, Global Affairs Canada, announced on Saturday that a Canadian had received consular services while under detention.
If 5G wireless is so clearly a concern for U.S. intelligence, a portion of the intelligence budget could be invested in creating an American competitor to China’s dominant Huawei corporation.
A nasty diplomatic dispute between South Korea and Japan grew even more intense on Thursday as a South Korean lawmaker accused the Japanese of shipping banned materials to North Korea on 30 different occasions over the past 20 years, in some cases shipping items that were useful in the production of nuclear weapons.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen arrived in New York on Thursday for a brief stay on the outbound leg of her trip to visit Taiwan’s allies in the Caribbean.
Norwegian researchers used a remote-controlled submersible to explore the wreck of a Soviet sub sitting in over 5,500 feet of water for the past 30 years and discovered its nuclear warheads and reactor are still emitting radiation at 800,000 times the normal background level.
China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday castigated Western reviewers for criticizing Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of Mulan. According to the Chinese Communist paper, negative reactions to the trailer for Mulan are dishonest and politicized, while Disney should be applauded for retelling a great Chinese “patriotic saga.”
China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday dumped a deeply patronizing editorial upon the student protesters of Hong Kong, describing them as lazy and reckless youth who desperately need the discipline and perspective of a solid education in mainland Communist schools.
A fire broke out Thursday at a gas pipeline near a thermal power plant on the outskirts of Moscow, killing one person and injuring 13 others.
