National Security

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran reportedly opened fire on protesters in the city of Saravan on Monday, killing and injuring an unconfirmed number of people.

Chinese state media lashed out at the Canadian government on Tuesday, threatening “serious consequences” for the Canadian parliament’s non-binding resolution to declare China’s abuse of the Uyghur Muslims as “genocide.”

Pope Francis sent a telegram to the Italian president Tuesday expressing his sorrow over the assassination Monday of the country’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Social media platform Twitter announced on Tuesday it has banned 373 accounts linked to the governments of Russia, Iran, and Armenia for violating various policies and “undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.”

Amnesty International (AI) said Wednesday that it would remove “prisoner of conscience” status from Russian dissident and prisoner Alexei Navalny after deeming some of his past comments “hate speech” or advocacy of violence.

The Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm announced on Wednesday that Phase III clinical trials found their Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate to be 72.51 percent effective in preventing infections.

The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times attacked Korean pop (K-pop) superstars BTS on Wednesday in response to a report that Big Hit Entertainment, the band’s record label, used a map in a corporate report that did not show parts of India as parts of China.

President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, has a history of cooperation organizations linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was shot and killed on Monday after armed assailants ambushed his U.N. convoy as he traveled in eastern DRC, the Italian foreign ministry confirmed in a statement.

Saudi women will be allowed to apply for positions in various branches of the Kingdom’s military for the first time, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense announced over the weekend.

GOP senators are urging Biden to implement a proposed rule to require U.S. schools to disclose their financial ties to Chinese Communist Confucius Institutes.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that $7 billion in Iranian assets, frozen in two South Korean banks due to U.S. sanctions since September 2019, would be released to Iran following “consultations” with the Biden administration. 

Education officials in Cameroon on Monday reported thousands of parents kept their children home from school because they feared the children would receive coronavirus vaccinations.

Ukraine has filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accusing Russia of the “targeted assassinations” of its political opponents “in Russia and on the territory of other state” and of hiding its lethal activities, a Tuesday press release from the ECHR revealed.

The director of a Chinese social development think tank recently proposed unmarried Chinese women over the age of 27 — known as “leftover” women or sheng nu in China — should embrace the surplus of single men in rural China to find a husband, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.

India’s active coronavirus caseload fell to under 150,000 on Tuesday, which amounts to 1.34 percent of the nation’s total number of recorded cases of the Chinese coronavirus to date, India’s health ministry said.

The province of Guangdong, China, unveiled a plan this week to increase its population by 1 million people a year, resulting in a population of 130 million people by 2035, but offered no details as to how it plans to do so.

A senior member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), handed a seat in Colombia’s Congress as part of a peace deal, threatened to kill President Iván Duque in a video surfacing Monday.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) concluded Chinese officials did “little” to investigate the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus and were uncooperative with international investigators during the first eight months of the pandemic, according to an internal document written in August which the UK Guardian made public on Tuesday.

The regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro staged a mega-concert in Caracas this weekend to call for the release of Alex Saab, a Colombian national arrested in Cape Verde last summer for alleged money laundering connected to his business dealings with the Venezuelan government.

Beijing’s assault on what little remains of Hong Kong’s autonomy continued Monday with the announcement of new rules to ensure that only “patriots,” meaning solid loyalists to China and its Communist Party, will be eligible to govern the island.

The Communist Party of China, through its embassy in Ottawa, accused Canada of genocide on Tuesday in response to the nation’s parliament voting to recognize that China is committing genocide against its Muslim-majority ethnic groups.

The Canadian House has voted to declare a genocide against the Uighurs in China, and to call for the removal of the Olympic games if needed.

Pope Francis will travel next month to Iraq, a land devastated by ongoing conflicts that have uprooted more than a million Christians in just two decades, France 24 reports.

Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro has spent months promoting Carvativir, his “miraculous” droplets that, according to him, neutralize the Chinese Coronavirus in its entirety.

UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab is calling on U.N. investigators to insist on urgent access to Uighur camps in Xinjiang to ascertain the level of human rights abuses taking place in the Chinese province.

Over 1,500 people have died in Nigeria in the first six weeks of 2021 due to general insecurity including terrorist attacks from the Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram and kidnappings, local media reported on Monday.

The daughter of current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Sara Duterte, is the Philippines’ top choice for president in 2022, followed closely by boxer-turned-senator Manny Pacquiao, according to a recent survey conducted by the Philippine polling firm OCTA Research.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reportedly issued a decree that female characters in cartoons must wear a hijab, the Islamic head covering that Iranian women are persecuted for refusing to wear.

Zimbabwean media reported Monday that villagers have accused Chinese mining companies of bribing local leaders to take control of mining areas, displacing village residents, and seizing control of land inside protected game preserves.