diplomats

The government of Saudi Arabia has reportedly opened its first liquor store since alcohol was banned in the early 1950s.

Canada expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei on Monday after an intelligence report accused him of targeting Michael Chong, a Conservative Party member of parliament, for retaliation after Chong spoke out against China’s genocide of the Uyghur Muslims. China quickly expelled a Canadian diplomat in retaliation.

The three Baltic states condemned comments by China’s envoy to France, who suggested that former Soviet republics aren’t sovereign nations.

The Sudanese army said it was coordinating efforts to evacuate diplomats from the United States, UK, China and France out of the country.

A former U.S. diplomat recently pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and taking photos of nude and partially nude women without their consent during his career.

Panelists and lawmakers at a House hearing urged a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China because of human rights abuses.

The State Department confirmed on Wednesday that numerous employees in China are receiving “ongoing” medical evaluations after a U.S. citizen at the American consulate in Guangzhou was diagnosed with a brain injury in an incident that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as “entirely consistent” with injuries in Havana, Cuba.

The United States will close a consulate in Seattle sending 48 diplomatic staff back to Russia as well as 12 diplomats at the United Nations.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Tuesday that the agency’s lawyers “would certainly … be looking at” the possibility that, in failing to prevent physical attacks on American diplomats and their families, Cuba may have violated the 1961 Vienna Convention.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced Friday that America would withdraw all “non-emergency personnel” from the U.S. embassy in Cuba and all family members following months of unexplained attacks on American diplomats that have left some with hearing loss and, reportedly, brain damage.

Politics, it is said, ought to stop at the water’s edge. Not so for former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard, who trashed President Donald Trump and his administration in a visit to his former host country last week.

WASHINGTON – State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Thursday that the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba would remain “fully operational” despite reports of American diplomats suffering suspicious physical symptoms that resulted in their departure from the island.

Russia has an interest in not getting along with the United States, which is going to frustrate any American administration, like it or not.

A growing diplomatic spat between the U.S. and Russia has resulted in the expulsion of two American and two Russian diplomats.