news

Hong Kong’s US and EU consulates light candles to mark Tiananmen crackdown anniversary. hongkongfp.com/…/in-pictures-hong-kongs-us-and-eu…

Scores of police were stopping people to search their belongings and question them. By late afternoon local time, reporters witnessed at least eight people taken away by police in vans – including Alexandra Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist better known as Grandma Wong. The 67-year-old was carrying flowers as police...

Stumbled upon this on Mastodon.

The removal of the memorials in Hong Kong came after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, leading the local government to essentially ban public commemorations of the 1989 killings. The 2,000-square-foot display includes newspaper clippings, letters written to protesters who were sent to jail, a...

Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old certified fitness instructor and artist who frequently promoted female empowerment on her social media accounts, was accused by Saudi authorities of using a hashtag – translated to #societyisready – to call for an end to male guardianship rules.She has not yet been convicted or sentenced and...

Erin O’Toole says the Canadian spy agency informed him that Beijing’s campaign used social media, specifically the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat. “My parliamentary caucus and myself were the target of a sophisticated misinformation and voter suppression campaign orchestrated by the People’s Republic of China,”...

While many analysts believe – or perhaps hope – that western countries would not weaponise hunger against China in the event of a conflict with Taiwan, the war in Ukraine has shown that energy is highly likely to be hit with sanctions. And unlike Russia, with its vast reserves of natural gas, China is dependent on other...

Stories told to children who lived under the Russian occupation in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province were designed to terrify them. When the fast-approaching Ukrainian forces came into Kherson, people added, they would hurt anyone who had been in contact with the Russians. The web of lies were often spun by the children’s...

It’s not news but I didn’t really find a place for it.

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them borrowed from China under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). An analysis has found paying back this debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open,...

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia’s Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017. The 56-year-old maintains his innocence and insists the information in question wasn’t classified and was freely available...

The daughter of Nikolai Gusev, director of the Vympel Design Bureau, which designs and produces the missiles used by the Russian army, has been living in Florida since 2021. The 20-year-old student Natalia Guseva rents an appartment in Miami for $3,500 a month, while a year of study at the University of Miami costs the family...

The China Labour Bulletin recorded 108 factory workers’ protests since early January, more than twice the amount recorded in all of 2022. Reduced orders from international buyers and poor economic conditions have led factories to lay off workers, relocate to reduce costs, or shut down altogether, the Bulletin says.

In theory, the import of drones into Russia should have been choked off by Western sanctions. In practice, however, it is clear that avenues for their procurement remain open for drones as well ad advanced microchips - used in everything from missiles to demining robots. They are flowing into Russia from abroad through companies...

Contrary to its promise, the German company not only continued its deliveries, but also began exporting laser rangefinder binoculars and night vision scopes. Laser rangefinders and levels from the Swiss company Leica Geosystems are also making their way into Russia, albeit through third countries. The equipment may have military...

Russia’s official public services portal, Gosuslugi, notified users of an upcoming forum titled “Strong ideas for a new era” and invited them to submit “an idea, a public initiative, or a project” that would contribute to “the country’s development” on an online platform created for the event....

Unilever became the first major European food company to stop imports and exports from Russia, as well as media and ad spending there, in March 2022. It continued, however, to supply “essential” food and hygiene products to Russians while pledging not to take any profits from those sales. Its Russian subsidiary Unilever Rus,...

Ann Widdecombe, who joined the Reform UK party this year, made the comments when she was asked what she would say to consumers who could not afford to pay for basics such as the ingredients of a cheese sandwich. The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, Sarah Olney, said: “How out of touch can you get? Ann Widdecombe joins a...

As the brutal war against Ukraine costs Russia’s army ever more casualties, recruitment drives for fresh replacements are now turning to migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus to fill the boots of the dead left behind by their prospective comrades. Meanwhile, Mikhail Matveyev, a Duma member, criticised "naturalised...

Chinese authorities raided three advisory firms over the past few months which offered investigative and strategic analysis for the Chinese market to foreign investors. Their staff -all Chinese nationals- were detained, one of them was sentenced to six years in prison for “stealing national secrets”. Alfred Wu, a researcher...