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BEIJING (AP) — China's new leader Xi Jinping is commanding wayward Communist Party cadres to purify themselves of corruption, and he's summed it up in a pithy slogan as Mao Zedong might have done: Look in the mirror, take a bath. China's leadership wants to show a cynical public that it's modernizing and serious about graft, but it appears to be favoring a top-down ideological campaign — with study sessions, self-criticism and propaganda — over imposing real checks on power. That worries many observers, not only because they doubt it will work, but because the tactic appears to be ripped...

Yes, At Some Point China Will Implode Henry BlodgetJune 17,2013 If there has been one prediction made more than any other over the past couple of decades, it's that China's miraculous economy is headed for a fall. China bears have pointed to a long list of disasters-in-the-making, from questionable economic statistics to skyrocketing real-estate prices to ghost cities to centrally planned growth to corruption to pollution to civil unrest to debt. And yet, despite all of these concerns, China's economic machine has just kept chugging along. But this time it's going to be different!, says an analyst from Fitch. This...

LiveThe whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history will be live online at 11am ET/4pm BST to answer your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations

The capability is being developed by DRDO as part of the Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) shield. (Reuters) New Delhi - India's missile defence system is set to get a big boost as it is developing capability to intercept enemy missiles fired from a distance of up to 5,000km, in effect tackling any possible threat from countries such as China. The capability is being developed by DRDO as part of the Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) shield, whose first phase is ready for deployment possibly in Delhi. Development of the first phase of the BMD programme has been completed, DRDO chief Avinash...

Classified US government data shown to the South China Morning Post by whistle-blower Edward Snowden has provided a rare insight into the effectiveness of Washington's top-secret global cyberspying programme. New details about the data can be revealed by the Post after further analysis of information Snowden divulged during an exclusive interview on Wednesday in which the former CIA computer analyst exposed extensive hacking by the US in Hong Kong and the mainland. The FBI said yesterday it had launched a criminal investigation and was taking "all necessary steps" to prosecute Snowden for exposing secret US surveillance programmes. FBI Director Robert...

Hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Hong Kong despite heavy rain to support the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and press the US to change its surveillance policies. The gathering on Saturday came hours before Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, broke days of silence on the case. He promised to "follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated". His spokesman declined to elaborate on what that follow-up may entail, the South China Morning Post said. Snowden has alleged that the US hacked hundreds...

Sometimes one must see to believe, in this case believe just how massive the raw demand for the shiny, barbarous relic is in China during times of relative monetary stability (in this case the Dragon Boat Festival). Now assume runaway inflation as we saw in 2011 China, which may be unleashed by something as catalytic as the PBOC once again deciding to inject liquidity in its suffocating banking system and to revive growth in the stalling economy. June 11, ten thousand people line up in front of a gold shop to buy gold. The buyers lined up during the...

Welcome to the strange -- and terrifying -- underground world of Chinese military fantasy novels. It is the year 2049. China's economic development has so disturbed the world's other major powers that the United States, Japan, and Russia form an alliance and invade China. Fierce battles break out on the plains of northeast China, where Japanese troops and U.S. fighter jets besiege Chinese infantry. Caught by surprise, China's army nonetheless stages a glorious counterattack by deploying levitating tanks, and employing a strategy based on lessons learned from the Anti-Japanese War and the Resist America War (better known in the West...

CHINA -- A Chinese woman almost lost her life savings recently when termites invaded a wooden drawer in which she kept a plastic bag containing 400,000 yuan: the equivalent of $65,000 U.S. dollars. It was only after the woman decided to redecorate her house in Guandong Province that she noticed the termites had dined on her nest egg. According to the Guangzhou Daily, the money was given to the woman by her children. A local bank generously scanned the remaining cash and was able to identity 340,000 yuan which means the termite's meal ultimately cost the woman roughly $9,786.

Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever. The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China. The company, HK Nicaragua Canal...

Sure most people just see refugees, but Democrats see voters. A number of the refugees will be Christian, but somehow I think Obama isn’t all that interested in Christian refugees. Taking in Muslim refugees from Muslim civil wars in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere has largely been a disaster. The original World Trade Center bombing happened in part because the United States was willing to host Egyptian Islamists who would have been arrested in their own country. And who exactly will be taking in now? If the Muslim Brotherhood Jihadists lose in Syria, their leaders will flee to Europe...

Chen Guangcheng, known for exposing coerced abortions and sterilizations resulting from China’s one-child policy and enforced by state family planning officials, has been booted from the New York University campus. Chen received a fellowship to study at New York University after seeking help at the U.S. embassy in Beijing last year to escape China, where he faced imprisonment and house arrest for exposing brutal campaigns of forced abortions. New York University law professor Jerome Cohen assisted Chen in China after he fled to the U.S. Embassy and assisted him in obtaining a fellowship at New York University. The two had...

Media titan Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife of 14 years, Wendi Deng. The 82-year-old billionaire and CEO of News Corp. filed a one-page document in New York State Supreme Court indicating the start of the divorce Thursday morning. "The relationship between the husband and wife has broken down irretrievably," sealed court documents claim, according to a Murdoch spokesman. A source familiar with the case said the couple had a prenuptial agreement and that the split would have no effect on the management or ownership of the company.

The Pentagon is concerned that a former National Security Agency contractor who is now in Hong Kong will compromise top-secret electronic intelligence programs targeted against China, according to a defense official. Edward Snowden, the former NSA technician who surfaced in Hong Kong Sunday, worked on highly classified electronic intelligence programs targeting China at the NSA’s Kunia facility in Hawaii. Snowden’s exact whereabouts are not known. He told the South China Morning Post in an interview published Wednesday that he plans to remain in the former British colony, something that likely would upset U.S.-China relations. “My intention is to ask the...

Japan’s Nikkei index fell 6.35% overnight after months of gains. The Yen surged past 95 per dollar rising to the strongest in two months, after government data showed Japanese investors were net sellers of overseas bonds. The Japanese sovereign curve has risen 30 basis points since May 2nd. Across the China Sea, the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 2.8 percent to a six-month low today as trading resumed after a three-day holiday. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies listed in Hong Kong dropped 2.7 percent, extending declines from this year’s peak on Feb. 1 to more than 20...

Well apparently a president can’t just make new lows for respect of American moral authority in one single term and then let it go at that. Nope. Apparently after getting stiff-armed by our ideological enemies once in the first Obama term- turning his back on American values and getting called out on it- the administration felt the need to demonstrate crumbling American might and values by going back to that well early in the second term too. During the first term, we suffered the embarrassment of the Chinese Communist who publicly lectured Obama about straying away from capitalism and taking...

I have chosen you for a special mission , not just for your zeal in me but through your fortitude to overcome the obstacles I 've allowed to be placed in your way , and these have been used to strengthen and nurture you in my spirit , for I have brought you to this level of enlightenment to allow you to see precisely how my spirit flows and works in and through peoples lives , for now more than ever before I will release my spirit to do more wonders and reveal the true nature of Christ in a...

An elderly woman got a nasty shock when she discovered termites had eaten through her life savings. When the lady from southern China, who has not been identified, was given £42,000 by her children she decided to store it in a drawer in her residence rather than deposit it in a bank. This was to prove a costly mistake for the unfortunate woman as when she went to retrieve some of the cash six months later she found the pesky termites had munched into it. In desperation she took the notes to the bank in the hope she could save...

Breitbart News can exclusively report on Tuesday night that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has translated and published a Chinese edition of two massive climate change volumes originally published by The Heartland Institute in 2009 and 2011. The volumes, Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, are chock full of 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data concerning the veracity of anthropogenic climate change. Together, they represent the most comprehensive rebuttal of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings, which have been the basis of the climate change legislation movement across the planet. The Chinese Academy of...

Human rights groups are decrying a new full-scale campaign by family planning officials in China to force women to get IUDs or be sterilized against their will. China Aid informs LifeNews today that a massive campaign is underway in a city in southern China, where all women of childbearing age are required to be fitted with IUDs or be sterilized, and similar campaigns have reportedly been launched in other provinces. The group indicates that, on June 5, some netizens posted the notices that have been distributed throughout the city of Huizhou. The notices reveal that the large-scale joint government department...

China’s latest manned spacecraft successfully blasted off Tuesday on a 15-day mission to dock with a space lab and educate young people about science. The Shenzhou 10 capsule carrying three astronauts lifted off as scheduled at 5:38 p.m. (0938 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It is China’s fifth manned space mission and its longest. …

You probably missed some pretty big news over the weekend: China and the United States agreed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. If you’re old enough to remember the ozone scare, that was mostly caused by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. A 1987 agreement banned those, giving rise to HFCs as a replacement, which don’t cause an ozone hole but do heat up the atmosphere a lot. Why is this a big deal? On its own terms, it will do a lot to restrain global warming, eliminating perhaps half a degree Celsius of expected warming over a century. But...

Hegemony: Chinese President Xi Jinping begins an Americas tour as tensions rise in Asia, Chinese hackers steal our secrets and the administration invites Beijing's growing navy to participate in exercises off Hawaii. Xi Jinping arrived Friday for a two-day summit with President Obama as part of a swing that included stops in Costa Rica, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago — a sign of China's rising influence in our backyard and its growth beyond being a regional Asian power. Beijing has quietly responded to our "pivot" to the Pacific by strengthening military, economic and diplomatic ties in our hemisphere while its...

China Pig Farm Accused Of Pumping Dissolved Carcasses Into A Nearby River Agence France Presse June 10, 2013, 7:21 AM Dead pigs being tossed into a truck in China. Reuters Authorities are reportedly probing a pig farm in central China for dissolving dead pigs in a chemical solution and pumping the resulting remains down its drains, which empty into a river. Huasheng Online, a news website published by the Hunan Daily Press Group, said environmental protection and animal hygiene authorities in Changsha, Hunan province, were investigating the allegations. The farm claimed that using strong alkali to break down carcasses before...

This is no longer the old Happy Meal economy of the 1980s, making toys and sneakers.

Bradley Manning proved that massive amounts of the government's most secret data was vulnerable to being dumped on the open Internet. A single individual achieved that unprecedented leak. According to the Washington Post, "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances." And this week, we learned that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unable to protect some of their most closely held secrets from Glenn Greenwald, Richard Engel, Robert Windrem, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras. Those journalists, talented as they are, possess somewhat fewer resources than foreign governments! So...

Your certainty of my truth is your saving grace . so contend for the faith you carry into battle confronting the enemy IS your sword of truth for in your knowing the battle is already mine subsides all doubt and quenches the fiery darts that pierces one's soul . So protect your heart with the Knowledge of the Overcomer for it IS THE ANSWER to the arsenal that IS yours as you OVERCOME ALL DOUBT ! Revelation 2:7 He who is able to hear, let him listen to and give heed to what the Spirit says to the assemblies (churches)....

MANILA, Philippines - The commander of the US Pacific Command (USPACOM) discussed with top defense and military officials the tension in the West Philippine Sea behind closed doors yesterday. Visiting USPACOM commander Adm. Samuel Locklear III also took up with Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, Armed Forces chief Gen. Emmanuel Bautista and Navy chief Vice Adm. Jose Luis Alano the Phl-US defense and military relations at Camp Aguinaldo. In a statement, Department of National Defense (DND) public affairs acting chief Anne Marie Sta. Ana said the US and the Philippines reaffirmed the importance of bilateral relations with the emerging traditional and...

Glenn Greenwald ✔ @ggreenwald Read this tweet and what follows: https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289 … 5:00 PM - 8 Jun 2013 194 Retweets 47 favorites Remember that tidbit about the Chinese president deciding not to sleep over at the lush Sunnylands estate with President Obama because of concerns of eavesdropping? Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. According to a series of tweets by Atlantic editor-at-large Steve Clemons, U.S. intel officials aren’t very careful about speaking their minds in public. Steve Clemons @SCClemons In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be...

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The yuan is nearing equilibrium, as its rate against the U.S. dollar has hit a new high for 19 times since the beginning of April, experts said. The central parity rate of the yuan strengthened by 117 basis points to reach a new high of 6.1620 against the U.S. dollar on Friday, according to data released by the China Foreign Exchange Trading System. In China's foreign exchange spot market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 1 percent from the central parity rate each trading day. The central parity rate of the yuan...

China's central bank said Friday that a long-awaited deposit insurance system is ready to be launched, as conditions are ripe and a consensus has been reached within the government. The system will help "increase the flexibility of commercial banks in terms of financial business innovation and risk control," the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in its 2013 financial stability report released Friday. The report said an implementation plan has been studied and verified. However, the report does not provide details on the system, such as whether the deposit insurance institution will be a private or government-run entity. Deposit insurance...

Remember those assurances that the Iraq war would pay for itself once oil revenues began gushing forth from a liberated Iraq? It is paying off -- for China. Iraq War Paying Off -- for China The New American 03 June 2013 Remember those assurances that the Iraq War would pay for itself, once those oil revenues began gushing forth from a liberated Iraq? Well, a decade later, the Iraq War is paying off after all -- for China. "We lost out," said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration. "The Chinese had nothing to do...

Chinese Trade Numbers Come In Massively Below Forecasts Fran Wang, Agence France Presse June 8, 2013, 6:07 AM Reuters China on Saturday reported a sharp slowdown in exports in May compared to the previous month while imports unexpectedly dropped, as the world's second largest economy grapples with slowing growth and sluggish overseas demand. Overseas shipments rose just one percent to $182.8 billion last month, far lower than 14.7 percent recorded in April, customs authorities said in a statement. It also missed a medium forecast of 5.6 percent expansion in a Dow Jones Newswires' poll of economists. Imports dropped 0.3 percent...

China's environmental situation has been described as "grim" in an annual update on the country's environment released this week. The update by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection said that overall pollution problems were serious last year and reporting on the update, the state-controlled newspaper China Daily said there has been a "marked deterioration in China's air, water and land quality". The 2012 Environmental Conditions Report addressed water and air pollution, the two types of pollution that have received the most attention over recent months. The report found that 57.3% of the groundwater in 198 cities in 2012 was "bad" or...

Are you ready for a future where China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States? Such a future would be unimaginable to many Americans, but the truth is that it is already starting to happen. Chinese acquisition of U.S. businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to absolutely shatter that record this year. Meanwhile, China is voraciously gobbling up real estate and is establishing economic beachheads all over America. If China continues to build economic power inside the United States, it will eventually become...

The study of the world’s oldest early primate skeleton has brought light to a pivotal event in primate and human evolution: that of the branch split that led to monkeys, apes and humans (anthropoids) on one side, and living tarsiers on the other. The fossil, that was unearthed from an ancient lake bed in central China’s Hubei Province, represents a previously unknown genus and species named Archicebus Achilles. The results of the research were published on 6 June 2013 in Nature. Oldest primate fossil rewrites evolutionary break in human lineage The fossil, which is 55 million years old and dates...

China’s President Xi Jinping is in America for two days of meetings with President Obama. The timing is diplomatically peculiar, coming on the heels of the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that squelched Chinese democracy. Given that the stated purpose of the summit is for the two leaders to build bridges, Mr. Obama is in a pickle: If he soft-peddles Beijing’s awful human-rights record, the ostensible leader of the free world once again exposes his weakness in confronting tyranny; if he calls out the Maoists, he rains on the weekend parade. As the candles flicker out from the...

Film to reveal heroine as a spy who helped JapanBy Jack Webster   American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, did not die at sea in 1937. Rather, she became a Japanese collaborator after being caught spying for the US during second world war. This and other amazing revelations are to be the basis of a Hollywood film that aims to uncover the strange truth behind her mysterious disappearance. Earhart was already an American heroine when, at midnight on July 2, 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from New...

Choices: 1. China poses an existential threat to the United States 2. China is a strategic adversary seeking regional or global hegemony 3. China is an economic competitor to the U.S. but poses no military threat 4. China poses no threat to the U.S. of any kind

China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S. maritime zones. The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region. “The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot...

No one wins a trade war. Ever. Not countries, not companies, and certainly not consumers. Yet, here we go again. People's Daily says China has more cards to play in EU trade dispute. China still has plenty more cards to play in an increasingly ugly trade dispute with the European Union, the official People's Daily newspaper said on Thursday, accusing Europe of not realizing that its global power was waning. The EU will impose duties on imports of Chinese solar panels from this week, a move that infuriated Beijing despite European attempts to soften the blow with a reduced rate....

VideoHubei, China - Chinese scientists have discovered a fossil that they claim is the earliest known ancestor of humans. The find has challenged the long-held belief that apes began their evolution in Africa. The Archicebus Achilles was discovered in 2002 on a lake bed in China's Hubei province, but took more than 10 years of analysis for scientists to declare it as the world's oldest known primate fossil. The scientists contend that the 55-million-year-old fossil, which looks a bit like a mouse with monkey-like feet, is the world's oldest known ape-like creature. "Now after we discovered this fossil, we can...

Economists In China Are Asking A Disturbing Question: Where Has All The Money Gone? Mamta Badkar June 6, 2013, 10:49 AM REUTERS/Jerry Lampen Chinese credit growth has outpaced GDP growth for some time. Some have argued that this is the main bear argument on China right now. Many are asking why this is the case? Where all the money's gone? And is China facing it's own Minsky moment — a phenomenon that refers to periods of speculation that lead to crisis and that was named after economist Herman Minsky who wrote about the inherent instability of bull markets. In a...

No such encounters will take place in Watford this week, as the Bilderberg, the annual conference for 140 of the world’s most powerful, meet for four days at The Grove, a £300-a-night golf hotel close to the M25. The entire hotel has been booked out, and a high fence erected around the exclusion zone. Armed checkpoints have been set up on local roads, and locals must show their passports to enter their own driveways. The Home Office may foot the bill. A US news site dedicated to uncovering conspiracies had booked a room for last week but were told by...

UPDATED With Traveling Music You probably heard that Lady M won’t be attending the China summit in California with Big Guy this weekend. The official reason is “domestic responsibilities” because this is the last week of school for the Wee Wons. That would normally mean that Friday is the last day of the school year; freeing Lady M from her “domestic responsibilities” for the weekend. Butt as you know, we’ve redefined “normal” around here. So, we’re not going to California this weekend, no matter what the Chinese press thinks. And they don’t think very much of it: First lady diplomacy...

Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) will have access to a credit line of $1 billion from China's Export-Import Bank to buy vessels and offshore oilfield equipment, the company announced Tuesday after signing the agreement with the bank. PEMEX stated that this loan is an important financing option for the renewal of its fleet and the modernization of its marine equipment in its exploration and production division. The loan is valid for three years. The agreement will back about $1.2 billion in the U.S. exports for projects that include the Cantarell oil field, new exploration and production development, and a new gas development...

Chinese auditors have found irregularities in 34 foreign- or partly foreign-funded 2011 projects involving 5.02 billion yuan ($819 million), including 46.65 million yuan in foreign capital. The figure included a misappropriation of 29.27 million yuan ($4.78 million) in 2011 in four projects that used foreign loans or assistance, the National Audit Office said on Wednesday. The fraud was found in an audit conducted last year on 94 government projects. The projects were audited in accordance with Chinese law and agreements with international organizations. Major problems unearthed included violations of laws, regulations and loan or assistance agreements. Also discovered were inadequate...

China's hopes that their first lady would dazzle the American public during this week’s summit between her husband, Xi Jinping, and Barack Obama have been dashed after it was announced that Michelle Obama would not attend.Communist Party bosses had seen the June 7-8 Sunnylands summit as a golden opportunity to deploy Peng Liyuan’s much-vaunted charms on the world stage in a bid to spin a more favourable image of China’s leaders. But on Tuesday Mrs Obama’s office told the New York Times the first lady would remain in Washington with her daughters who are coming to the end of their...

US Treasury is considering letting China cut in front of other investors and buy Treasury debt direct from … Treasury. That is, bypass Primary Dealers. The relationship means the People’s Bank of China can buy United States debt using a different method from any other central bank. (Reuters) – China can now bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt and go straight to the U.S. Treasury, in what is the Treasury’s first-ever direct relationship with a foreign government, according to documents viewed by Reuters. Its not the first time Treasury has schmoozed China. In 2009, when Treasury officials found...

(article photo) As America grew in the 1800s from a republic of a few millions, whose frontier stopped at the Mississippi, into a world power, there were constant collisions with the world’s greatest empire. In 1812, we declared war on Britain, tried to invade Canada and got our Capitol burned. In 1818, Andrew Jackson, on an expedition into Spanish Florida to put down renegade Indians harassing Georgia, hanged two British subjects he had captured, creating a firestorm in Britain. In 1838, we came close to war over Canada’s border with Maine; in 1846, over Canada’s border with the Oregon Territory....