National Security

States across India re-imposed lockdowns Monday to contain a surge in new Chinese coronavirus cases nationwide.

China will hold 20 music festivals across the country during its upcoming May Day holiday, May 1-5, with booking sites expecting the concerts to attract up to 200 million travelers.

Police opened fire on a crowd of protesting workers at the construction site of a Chinese-financed power plant in southeastern Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), in a series of tweets on Sunday, expressed his disagreement with former President Donald Trump’s statement applauding President Joe Biden’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan after almost 20 years of deployment there.

Veterans of the 2506 Brigade, a group of Cuban exiles and American citizens whom President John F. Kennedy abandoned in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, observed the 60th anniversary of the failed liberation operation this weekend.

Russian prison officials said Monday that dissident Alexei Navalny has been moved to a prison hospital to receive “vitamin therapy” for his ailing health. Navalny’s physician, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said his patient could “die at any moment.”

The government of Chile defended its decision to trust Chinese vaccine products Sunday after its national vaccination program, one of the world’s most successful, preceded an exponential increase in confirmed coronavirus cases.

The Chinese drug company Fosun Pharma filed for approval to distribute the Chinese coronavirus vaccine developed by American company Pfizer and European partners BioNTech in China, state media noted on Sunday, a sign that Beijing increasingly distrusts its homemade products.

The Biden administration has delivered a “sharp rebuke” to Israel for undermining its position in talks with Iran by its “embarrassing chatter and bragging” about the bomb at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant, Israel’s Channel 12 reported Friday.

The Minnesota National Guard said some of its members came under fire in northern Minneapolis on Sunday morning.

A wildfire that began on the slopes of Table Mountain reached the mountainside campus of the University of Cape Town on Sunday, damaging several buildings on campus, including a library that housed rare and irreplaceable African books.

Pope Francis expressed his “deep concern” Sunday over the heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine, as Russia continues its massive military buildup at the nation’s border.

Iran has begun enriching uranium to 60 percent — dangerously close to weapons-grade — at an “aboveground facility” at its Natanz nuclear enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Saturday, confirming an earlier statement made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who said the move came as a direct response to Israel’s “nuclear terrorism” at the plant days earlier.

Indian Muslims must receive a full set of Chinese coronavirus vaccinations before participating in this year’s Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the Hajj Committee of India announced Thursday.

Canadian government officials have failed to adequately discourage vandalism at the Chinese Embassy in Canada, the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece, alleged on Friday.

Unspecified sellers in China are increasingly using online venues to advertise Uyghurs for sale in “batches of 50 to 100 workers,” Sky News revealed on Friday. “On Chinese websites, there are dozens of postings advertising Uighur [sic] labour, in batches of 50

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Friday, telling reporters that “most people recognize the history of systemic racism in our country.”

Washington will demonstrate “enduring” support for Afghanistan even after the U.S. withdraws its troops from the country later this year, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during an unannounced visit to Kabul on Thursday.

One of the two remaining survivors from the USS Arizona marked his 100th birthday Thursday and received a special message from the White House Secret Service.

A coalition of Latin American anti-communist activists, including Cuban dissidents who suffer regular repression on the island, organized a multi-continental set of peaceful assemblies Thursday calling for the freedom of 47 pro-democracy activists arrested in Hong Kong for allegedly violating an illegal “national security” law.

President Joe Biden told reporters Thursday he is “prepared to take further actions” against Russia if it “continues to interfere with our democracy,” on the same day Turkish government reports claimed Biden had canceled a scheduled U.S. warship mission apparently meant to deter menacing Russian behavior in the Black Sea.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy is expected to file a bill that would designate the most violent cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations. The bill comes amid Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s similar requests for the designations.

The Chinese Communist Party passed a law on Thursday that will result in the construction of three research laboratories at biosafety level-4, approved for research on the most dangerous pathogens.

The official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Granma, celebrated the opening of the regular Party Congress on Friday with an article boasting, “Fidel is more alive than ever, Raúl is still leading us.”

The Washington Post is still giving former President Donald Trump “four Pinocchios” for pushing back on a partially discredited story in 2020 that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered officials on Wednesday to explore filing an international court injunction against Japan over its recent decision to release 1.25 million tons of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

The brutal violence of Islamist militants in northern Mozambique is “driving the local population from their homes in terror,” the Barnabas Fund reported Friday.

Iran announced Friday it is now enriching uranium at up to 60 percent purity, its highest level ever, just days after an attack targeted its key Natanz nuclear site.

Europe should consider Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines as a “trustworthy alternative” to other shots, the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper People’s Daily suggested on Thursday, days after Beijing admitted its domestically produced coronavirus vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates.”

An official admitted only “low to moderate confidence” in the claim that Russians put bounties on US troops in Afghanistan.