Free Republic

  Chinese Prisons More Modern & Luxurious Than Schools by Tingting on November 25, 2009 From Mop:China’s prisons are more modernized than our rural elementary schoolsWhere is this? The White House? No, this is Jiansu Province Yancheng Prison.Such luxurious office for the Jiansu Province prison, unless they are for meeting the family of VIP inmates, or to show off the extent of China’s human rights?Anybody dares to say that Jiansu Province Prison’s architecture style isn’t a great fusion of traditionalist and modernist elements?The basketball court for Jiansu Province Prison is so big, not many universities in China have one like this. It is going...

World powers united in condemnation of Iran's nuclear activities yesterday in a rare show of international consensus on the threat posed by Tehran's continued nuclear defiance. China and Russia joined the United States, Britain, France and Germany in backing an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution censuring Iran and ordering it to halt construction of a secret uranium enrichment plant. The resolution, the first since February 2006, passed with 25 votes and six abstentions. Only Malaysia, Venezuela and Cuba supported Iran. ...China, which has shared Moscow's reluctance to take a hard line with Tehran, was reportedly persuaded to support the resolution...

Top News Story Secret nuclear enrichment plants exposed. Kenneth R. Timmerman, News Max reported that new evidence is emerging that Iran has built a secret plant, located some 20 kilometers to the northeast of Tehran near the Lashgarak dam, which houses a clandestine centrifuge uranium enrichment plant, where Iran is making nuclear weapons material.   What are Russia and China up to? Yahoo News reported that China and Russia have again refused to join with other big powers in threatening sanctions over Iran's nuclear program.The Financial Times reported that a central Asian summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization which...

WASHINGTON: Bull in a China shop is not an expression one would normally use to describe India’s mild-mannered Prime Minister, but at a Washington think-tank on Monday evening Manmohan Singh was anything but delicate on India’s newly nettlesome neighbor before an audience that is largely in thrall of the Middle Kingdom’s meteoric rise on the global stage. In candid remarks that were keenly scrutinized in the context of New Delhi’s niggling troubles with Beijing and US overtures to the country, Dr Singh offered an Indian perspective on rising China that included an admission that lately, ''there is but a certain...

Dubai is asking creditors to accept a six-month suspension on debt repayments for its severely cash-strapped conglomerate Dubai World. The government of the Gulf emirate has also appointed consultants Deloitte to restructure state-run Dubai World's operations. The group includes property developer Nakheel, which built one of the state's most ostentatious projects, the palm-shaped, man-made residential islands of the Palm Jumeirah. The conglomerate also includes DP World, owner of the former P&O ports operator. According to Nakheel, Dubai World has $59bn (£35bn) of liabilities, a large proportion of Dubai's total debt of $80bn (£47bn). The emirate's government said in a statement:...

DALI, China — Justin Franchi Solondz, an environmental activist from New Jersey who spent years evading charges of ecoterrorism in the United States by hiding out in China, was sentenced to three years in prison by a local court on Friday on charges of manufacturing drugs in this backpacker haven. After serving his time, Mr. Solondz, 30, who is on the F.B.I.’s wanted list, will be deported to the United States, where he faces charges stemming from what the authorities say was his role in an arson rampage that destroyed buildings in three western states as a member of a...

China appears to be having success in using diplomacy to disarm Taiwan (which it considers a rebellion province, and threatens to take by force, if peaceful means fail.) For decades, China has been putting economic and diplomatic pressure on other nations to prevent them from supplying Taiwan with weapons. Even the U.S. has constantly been pressured, despite the fact that there is a three decade old American law that mandates U.S. sales of weapons to Taiwan. But China has leaned on the U.S. despite that law, and has succeeded in stalling Taiwanese efforts to buy 66 more F-16 fighters. While...

BBC's reliable alarmist Richard Black tells us that the path has just been cleared for Obama's nervous lurch to commit the U.S. politically to Kyoto II energy-use reduction in the name of catastrophic man-made global warming (talk about doubling-down on the tone-deaf, after the job-killing health-care effort in the face of a recession and anxiety about employment). The reason, we are informed, is not only because of Obama's apparent response to ClimateGate, but the Chinese have committed to an "ambitious" emission reduction of their own!That's spin. China offers a non-binding promise to increase its emissions not beyond a certain rate...