National Security

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.

The navies of the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan began exercises on Tuesday in the Northern Arabian Sea, launching the second phase of a joint “Malabar 2020” naval drill viewed by observers as a regional deterrent to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

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.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told fellow heads of state at the BRICS summit on Tuesday that the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) “urgently needs reforms” and that its “supposed monopoly on knowledge” hurt the fight against the Chinese coronavirus.

New peace deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain send a message to Iran that its influence in the region is waning, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick urged the U.S. government to “take action against Turkey” on Wednesday for its “unprovoked and deadly attacks on Armenians” in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Lawmakers in Turkey voted on Tuesday to allow Turkey to send troops into Azerbaijan for “peacekeeping” purposes, despite Azerbaijan and Armenia reaching a peace agreement independently of Turkey over a week ago.

The head of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, urged the world on Tuesday to reject the results of planned elections in Venezuela next month, certifying the socialist regime has made a free and fair election impossible.

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.

Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, documented its highest Chinese coronavirus positivity rate since March on Tuesday, an exclamation point on a surging wave of cases nationwide that follow weeks of Islamist mob protests against French President Emmanuel Macron for his condemnation of a jihadist beheading.

Chinese authorities indicted a Shanghai-based citizen journalist for allegedly sending “false information” after she reported on the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, early this year, a prosecution document released on Monday and seen by the Guardian revealed.

Iraqi authorities on Monday hanged 21 men convicted of terrorism at the country’s Nasiriyah prison, Iraq’s Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement.

The Supreme Judicial Council of Saudi Arabia suspended two judges on Monday after they issued controversial rulings banning the use of shisha tobacco and shaving, local media reported Tuesday.

Iran has debuted its own “homegrown” rapid antigen coronavirus testing kit which it claims can detect with “high accuracy” whether someone is carrying the disease in less than 20 minutes. 

Jakarta’s deputy governor banned Christmas and New Year events in the Indonesian capital this holiday season in an announcement Monday.

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.

Japan’s Nikkei Asian Reviews highlighted the emergency of “virus vigilantes” in the country on Tuesday: enforcers that use peer pressure to keep people from violating lockdown restrictions without actually having any legitimate authority.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday reversed a decision by the Arlington National Cemetery to cancel its annual Wreaths Across America event.

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.”

Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller announced a U.S. troop withdrawal down to 2,500 in Afghanistan and Iraq, consistent with President Trump’s promises to bring U.S. troops home and in furtherance of his goal to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday published a year-end review of the “China Initiative,” a program launched in 2018 to detect and counter “national security threats posed by the policies and practices of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government.”

Pro-democracy dissidents in Cuba condemned the island’s “accredited journalists” — reporters from mainstream media outlets with Communist Party permission to work — for their silence in the wake of an increasingly violent wave of repression, the Spain-based Diario de Cuba reported on Tuesday.

Marie Stopes International, one of the world’s largest abortion providers, is changing its name due to unwanted attention that its founder was a eugenicist and a racist.

Leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — collectively known as BRICS, a coalition of the world’s major emerging economies — held their 12th annual meeting on Tuesday in a teleconference hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reaffirmed his country’s confidence in not participating in the world’s largest trade pact, the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), in remarks on Tuesday, suggesting that China had not presented “the full picture” of what the pact entails in an honest way.

Former President Barack Obama writes in his memoirs he was also puzzled as to why he was chosen in 2009 to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday approved construction of a naval logistics hub on the Red Sea coast of Sudan with the capacity to harbor nuclear vessels, Reuters reports.

Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, an Islamist who has spearheaded a campaign demanding global laws against blasphemy, said in a recent interview that President Donald Trump is placing “extraordinary” pressure on his country to recognize the state of Israel.