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A NEWSWEEK article by investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball about the memo linking Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dismisses a recent WEEKLY STANDARD report as "hype" and concludes, the "tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-al Qaeda complicity is far from closed." While it's refreshing to see the establishment media pick up the story, the Newsweek article is less than authoritative. The authors write: "The Pentagon memo pointedly omits any reference to the interrogations of a host of other high-level al Qaeda and Iraqi detainees--including such notables as Khalid...

"Will that be successful? I tend to doubt it," the president said during an appearance with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. "The reason I doubt it is because China has become very spoiled. The European Union has become very spoiled. Other countries have become very spoiled, because they always got 100 percent of whatever they wanted from the United States." "But we can't allow that to happen anymore," Trump added. (please see full story at link)

Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China’s new indoctrination camps had to disavow their Islamic beliefs, criticize themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party. When Bekali, a Kazakh Muslim, refused to follow orders each day, he was forced to stand at a wall for five hours at a time. A week later, he was sent to solitary confinement, where he was deprived of food for 24 hours. After 20 days in the heavily guarded camp, he wanted to kill himself.

North Korea flipped out on the US on Tuesday with a sudden series of statements bashing President Donald Trump's administration. •It came not long after a vaunted peace summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump was announced. •Pyongyang's specific complaints may not be the real reason the country is complaining. •Recent reports say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked North Korea to send some of its nuclear weapons overseas for dismantlement — that would be a much larger step toward disarming than Pyongyang has taken before. •If the US insisted on that demand, it would either prove Kim is sincere...

China urges North Korea to proceed with Donald Trump summit China has urged its ally North Korea to proceed with a historic summit between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and US president Donald Trump amid threats from Pyongyang to scrap the meeting. Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the sides should ensure the meeting runs as planned and yields “substantial outcomes”. Mr Kim and Mr Trump are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, but Pyongyang has threatened to withdraw, saying it has no interest in a “one-sided” affair meant to pressure it into abandoning its nuclear weapons. Mr...

Taiwan says it is accelerating production of nearly a dozen stealthy Tuo Chiang-class missile corvettes, the first of which will be focused on air-defense missions. The announcement is another part of the island’s attempts to keep pace with China’s People’s Liberation Army's development of increasingly advanced capabilities in the air and at sea and provide a credible defense during a crisis in the region. On May 14, 2018, Taiwanese Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa said that under the new plan, eight additional Tuo Chiangs – a name that translates simply as Tou River, an upper tributary of the Yangtze...

Marco Rubio ‏ Verified account @marcorubio Follow Follow @marcorubio More #ZTE issue should have nothing to do with broader trade talks. What is the point of cancelling Iran deal if we aren’t going to sanction those like ZTE who help Iran avoid sanctions? Plus ZTE helps #China spy on America & steal our intellectual property.

White House is ready to walk away from North Korea as Sarah Sanders says Trump will stay with 'maximum pressure campaign' to force Kim to the table June 12 Singapore summit between Trump and Kim is suddenly in jeopardy North Korean government blames joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises Pyongyang sees the drills as a rehearsal for a full-scale invasion Kim also canceled meeting with South Korea's president on a few hours' notic Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that North Korean outrage was par for the course and the U.S. was moving ahead with preparations A senior White House official...

Now, based on two slight clues, experts have a new theory about what doomed the flight: the pilot was committing suicide. From The Washington Post: All but one of the 239 people on the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had probably been unconscious — incapacitated by the sudden depressurization of the Boeing 777 — and had no way of knowing they were on an hours-long, meandering path to their deaths. Along that path, a panel of aviation experts said Sunday, was a brief but telling detour near Penang, Malaysia, the home town of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. On two occasions,...

All but one of the 239 people on the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had probably been unconscious — incapacitated by the sudden depressurization of the Boeing 777 — and had no way of knowing they were on an hours-long, meandering path to their deaths. Along that path, a panel of aviation experts speculated Sunday, was a brief but telling detour near Penang, Malaysia, the hometown of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. On two occasions, whoever was in control of the plane — and was probably the only one awake — tipped the craft to the left. The experts believe Zaharie,...

North Korea on Wednesday injected further uncertainty into plans for a highly anticipated summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump. The reclusive regime said it will reconsider the historic June 12 meeting scheduled to take place in Singapore if the U.S. insists on Pyongyang relinquishing its nuclear weapons, Reuters reported, citing North Korea's state news agency KCNA. The development is the latest sign of possible backtracking by Kim following the ruler's months-long international charm offensive that was widely hoped to clear tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Earlier, the rogue state canceled talks with South Korea and threatened...

Teachers have long supplemented their incomes by tutoring. And there’s perhaps never been a better, or easier, time to do it than right now. The reason: China-based online education companies are in an apparent race with each other to hire U.S. teachers who’d like to work from home this summer and, using their webcams, “teach cute kids” the English language — in the marketing parlance of one of those companies, Beijing-based VIPKid. If you doubt that’s true, you haven’t been looking at the classifieds. Just today, five-year-old VIPKid i — which reportedly raised $200 million in fresh funding last summer...

Leading up to the much-anticipated meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore next month, a former North Korean official says the country is only putting on a show about getting rid of their nuclear weapons. Thae Yong-Ho defected from North Korea in 2016, where he was the deputy ambassador to Great Britain. He said, “In the end, North Korea will remain a nuclear power packaged as a non-nuclear power.” He explained that the North “would oppose intrusive inspections as they would be viewed as a process of breaking down Kim Jong Un’s absolute power...

Remember how China drew praise for extending all that influence throughout Africa, and not just Africa, but in Latin America and Asia, too?  Investing in development where wicked private investors just wouldn't?  Telling everyone that its gentle message worldwide was "Let's get rich together"?  Showing America how it's done? This propaganda has been in the news pipeline for years and drawn a lot of praise, or at least subtle accolades, from the pundits.  But now it turns out that that aid and those "investments" weren't quite as free and altruistic as promoted. China is now putting the squeeze on the countries it made its "investments" in.  Not...

The big fear of liberals isn't that President Donald Trump will fail. What really gnaws at them is their extreme fear that Trump will be successful. In the case of Vox's senior correspondent, Matthew Yglesias, the specific possibility that Trump's policy towards North Korea could prove to be a success has inspired a Trump deranged horror in him.  You can see the symptoms of his derangement in the very first two paragraphs of his May 14 mental meltdown known as Why are we taking Donald Trump’s Korea diplomacy seriously?

Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday that the Chinese business deal linked to President Trump’s properties was a violation of the Emoluments Clause. “I certainly view this as a violation of the Emoluments Clause,” Mr. Schiff, California Democrat, said on CNN. Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday that he wanted federal officials to help get the Chinese phone company ZTE back into business after U.S. penalties threatened to shut the business down, according to The Hill. The Huffington Post reported that it was only 72 hours later that a Chinese company offered a $500 million loan to an Indonesia construction project associated...

A delegation of Workers’ Party Central Committee senior officials traveled from Pyongyang to Beijing Monday to learn from China’s economic reforms. Their visit follows diplomatic warming between North Korea and China following recent back-to-back summits by their leaders The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday that Pak Thae-song, a vice chairman of the Central Committee, led the delegation to China for a friendly visit without further elaborating. The delegation was greeted by a Chinese Communist Party official and North Korea’s ambassador to China upon arrival at the Beijing International Airport Monday. They headed to Diaoyutai State...

Millions of American users of smartphones made by ZTE Corp. are already feeling the fallout from the U.S. Commerce Department’s blacklisting of the Chinese phonemaker: They’re unable to update Google’s Android operating system. Last month’s wide-ranging order by the U.S. Commerce Department prevents American companies from selling components and software to ZTE, the fourth-largest vendor of mobile phones in the U.S. That has led Google to halt updates to ZTE phones, leaving users cut off from security patches, technical support and other functions provided by the Android operating system used on ZTE’s smartphones. Though Chinese consumers have shunned ZTE in...

A need that was identified years ago may soon be filled. Novi City Council has approved the conditional purchase and sale of a 10-acre property located along Grand River Avenue, just east of Town Center Drive and south of 11 Mile Road for $3.15 million. The developer, Sakura Novi LLC., an affiliate of Robert B. Aikens and Associates, plans to construct a $50 million Asian Village. The village, which will feature housing, restaurants, lifestyle services, retail and office space as well as a 25,000 square-foot Asian market and food-hall operated by Novi-based One World Market, will be a significant asset...

The captain of doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 selected a route that would effectively render the plane invisible on radar in order to commit suicide, experts said Sunday. The suspicion that MH370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was attempting suicide was agreed upon, aviation experts said in a panel discussion on 9 News Australia. Investigators believe MH370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was attempting suicide when the plane disappeared. (Facebook) "He was killing himself; unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately," Larry Vance, a former senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said. Shah...