Joshua Wong, 18, a student leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was assaulted by an as-of-yet unidentified attacker. Wong was out on a date with his girlfriend when the assailant attacked him and his girlfriend outside a movie theater near the site of important protests from last year.
President Obama’s eagerness to set his Iranian partners-in-peace up with a fully functional economy and functional nuclear weapons is not generating much reciprocal affection from Tehran. Iran’s Fars news agency reports that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s top adviser for foreign affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati, declared his country “is keen to build closer military ties with China, welcoming Beijing to expand its naval presence worldwide.”
In a move that ties into China’s ambition to rebuild the “Silk Road” trade route and assert maritime dominance, the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper mused that war with the United States over disputed South China Sea islands was “inevitable” unless the U.S. backed down.
It is Victory Day in Europe and Russia, but Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping instead of celebrating with his World War II allies. The talks include agreements on the economy and energy as Russia continues to suffer under sanctions for the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The quintessential symbol of Christianity—the cross—has been outlawed on the rooftops of buildings in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, pending final approval.
A group of around 30 taxi drivers from northern China traveled to Beijing and drank pesticide in the middle of a mall, collapsing and frothing at the mouth during peak shopping hours on Saturday.
The New York Times has a depressing article headlined “Mutual Suspicion Mars Tech Trade With China,” whose title buries the lede. The story is more about tech companies suspicious of both China and the Obama Administration. There is a serious information-technology trade war underway, and China is eating Team Obama’s lunch, in part due to continuing fallout from Edward Snowden’s revelations of Obama’s digital surveillance state.
Having announced a Mao-style “mass line” campaign to eradicate corruption within the Chinese Communist Party last October, Beijing declares through its state-run media that more than 2,000 Communist Party officials have been “punished” for violating “anti-graft” rules.
China is cracking down on free speech again. This time, an internet watchdog and organ of the country’s Communist Party has banned web users from using pseudonyms to post messages under the names of famous people. A new set of rules will also require Internet users to register accounts using their real names.
Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is under fire for sending a tweet, during a diplomatic trip to China, in which she attempted to recreate an Asian accent, replacing r’s with l’s.
