National Security

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.

A team of security agents raided Xuncheng Church in China’s Shanxi province on Sunday, interrupting the worship service and arresting the preacher as well as six members of the congregation, International Christian Concern (ICC) reported Tuesday.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman defended the leader on Monday after he received criticism for telling a sex-related joke at a Typhoon Vamco press briefing over the weekend.

Ethiopia’s air force bombed the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle in the country’s north on Monday, local residents told Voice of America (VOA).

The British government has failed to deport nearly 50 foreign Islamic terrorists after they were released from prison, a report from a foreign policy think tank has found. Analysis of Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service records by the Henry

Trump can cement his legacy as the president who ended America’s longest war, said his nominee for Ambassador to Afghanistan, William Ruger.

Villagers living in Nagorno-Karabakh burned down their houses before fleeing to Armenia this weekend to prevent Azerbaijan, which will soon control the territory, from using them.

Nigerian soldiers razed at least six synagogues run by Jewish adherents of the local Igbo ethnic tribe last week in southern Rivers State, located in Nigeria’s Biafra region, the Jerusalem Post reported on November 14.

Chinese state media spent the weekend celebrating the announcement of a massive trade deal with 14 other Asia-Pacific nations — including key U.S. allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, but not the United States itself — as the “end of U.S. hegemony in the West Pacific.”

The Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the ambush of a military convoy in Burkina Faso November 11 that killed 14 soldiers.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is compiling a “blacklist” of Taiwan independence activists who will face criminal prosecution by Chinese authorities for their efforts to protect the island’s democratic rule, Hong Kong-based newspaper Ta Kung Pao reported on Sunday.

Thousands of supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), an Islamist group in Pakistan, staged a sit-in and march from neighboring Rawalpindi to the capital that spanned overnight and into the morning hours of Monday, demanding justice against French President Emmanuel Macron.

North Korean socialist dictator Kim Jong-un presided over an emergency meeting of the communist politburo this weekend to discuss the ongoing strategy against the Chinese coronavirus, state media revealed on Monday.

A spokesman for Zanu-PF, the ruling socialist party in Zimbabwe, reportedly dismissed the American presidential election as a “circus” on Monday and falsely accused President Donald Trump of saying all Africans were “assholes.”

The civil war brewing in Ethiopia escalated dangerously on Sunday when the insurgent Tigray region fired rockets across the border at the airport in Asmara, the capital of neighboring Eritrea.