Free Republic

The Chinese government has drawn wide international condemnation for its harsh crackdown on ethnic Muslims in its western region, including holding as many as a million of them in detention camps. Now, documents and interviews show that the authorities are also using a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. It is the first known example of a government intentionally using artificial intelligence for racial profiling, experts said. The facial recognition technology, which is integrated into China’s rapidly expanding networks of surveillance cameras, looks exclusively for Uighurs based on...

Canada’s foreign minister said on Friday it was likely that foreign actors would meddle in her country’s October elections and her British counterpart said a deterrent to stop countries like Russia from interfering was critical. U.S. intelligence officials and the governments of some European Union countries have accused Russia of interfering in their elections in recent years, allegations strongly denied by Moscow. When asked whether she was worried Russia would interfere in the election, Chrystia Freeland said she was “very concerned”. “Our judgment is that interference is very likely and we think there have probably already been efforts by malign...

The U.S. trade deficit tumbled nearly 15 percent in January as imports fell and exports rose. Shipments of American goods to China skidded to the lowest level in more than eight years as the world’s two biggest economies remained locked in a trade war. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between the goods and services that the United States sells and what it buys from other countries dropped by 14.6 percent to $51.1 billion in January from $59.9 billion in December. Exports rose 0.9 percent to $207.3 billion, and imports dropped 2.6 percent to $258.5 billion. The deficit...

Full title; America gets its ‘a@@ handed to it’ in WW3 simulations: U.S. forces are defeated by Russia and China in almost all scenarios, analysts warn Nonprofit global policy think tank RAND performs simulated war scenarios to test how the US would fare against other leading military superpowersThe simulations cover battle on land, at sea, in the air, space and cyberspace Analysts warned last week that the US loses to Russia or China in most scenariosHowever, they said it would take just $24billion annually to improve outcomesThat's about three percent of the $750billion defense budget proposed for 2020  By

Images of the site showed a fireball exploding, billowing clouds enveloping the area, injured people, and damage to buildings. The blast was so powerful that it knocked down factory buildings some distance away, trapping workers, according to local media. Staff at the Henglida Chemical Factory, 3km (1.8 miles) from the explosion, said its roof collapsed as they fled, and windows and doors were blown out. Provincial authorities said firefighters had to be brought in from across the province. The fire was brought under control at around 03:00 local time on Friday, state TV said.

Full Title JUST IN: Jeb Bush Super PAC Hit with Massive FEC Fine For Accepting $1.3 Million in Illegal Donations From Chinese Corporation The Intercept has determined that a corporation owned by a Chinese couple made a major donation to Jeb Bush’s Super PAC Right to Rise USA — and it did so after receiving detailed advice from Charlie Spies, arguably the most important Republican campaign finance lawyer in American politics. The Spies memo was dated February 19, 2015. One month later, American Pacific International Capital Inc., a California corporation owned by Gordon Tang and Huaidan Chen, a married couple...

The Federal Election Commission is fining a super PAC that supported former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush for accepting over $1.3 million in illegal donations from Chinese nationals. The Right to Rise super political action committee was fined $390,000 for soliciting the foreign contributions during the 2016 campaign. American Pacific International Capital, a Chinese-owned company, was fined $550,000 for giving the donation. …

China’s central bank governor on Sunday affirmed an official promise to avoid manipulating its currency to boost exports, an issue he said American and Chinese negotiators discussed in their latest talks aimed at ending a tariff war. Yi Gang gave no indication the two sides reached agreements beyond previous commitments produced by meetings of the Group of 20 major economies. He spoke at a news conference during the annual meeting of China’s ceremonial legislature. “We stress that we will never use the exchange rate for competitive purposes, nor will we use it to boost China’s exports,” Yi said. Yi took...

Germans have an increasingly negative view of the relationship between their country and the US, a survey released on Friday indicated, with many seeing China as a more reliable partner. Just over 42 percent of Germans who took part in the study said they saw China as a more reliable partner than the US, compared with 23.1 percent who favored the US over China. The study was carried out by the research organization Civey and the not-for-profit group Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge), which promotes greater cooperation between the US and Germany. In the survey summary, Michael Werz, from the Center for...

Government officials are going after primary and secondary school students to fill their minds with atheist ideology.“I will adhere to the correct political direction, advocate science, promote atheism, and oppose theism.” Those are the words the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now requiring students to sign on to in its quest to indoctrinate every Chinese person with a hatred for religion so that it can stamp out all traces of it in China. Last August, the Education Bureau of Lishan district in Anshan city, in China’s northeastern province of Liaoning, issued a plan for the campaign to resist religious beliefs...

President Donald Trump plans to nominate David Malpass, a Trump administration critic of the World Bank, to lead the institution. That’s according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions.Trump is expected to make an announcement later this week. Malpass, the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, has been a sharp critic of the World Bank, especially over its lending to China. …

China is a land where society changes every couple of months. You leave a town, and come back in six months and all the roads are different. New buildings are everywhere. The kids are using new slang, and new apps and everything is radically different. It’s kind of unnerving. Foreigners come to China, and are amazed at how different it is compared to their expectations. Locals are totally immersed in the change and look outside China with wonder at how could anyone stand to live elsewhere where everything changes at a glacial pace. China is rushing head-first into the new...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to harass and persecute Christians and, in recent months, has taken to removing pictures of Jesus Christ from inside homes and replacing them with pictures of dictator Mao Zedong and/or China’s current authoritarian president, Xi Jinping. In addition, Communist officials have removed Christian symbols and phrases on the outside of homes and replaced them with phrases praising socialist materialism. As the religious liberty and Chinese human rights magazine Bitter Winter and CBN News have reported, government officials in Xiayi county in the Henan Province have warned, “Anyone who hangs up portraits of Jesus or...

China’s 2018 economic growth fell to a three-decade low, adding to pressure on Beijing to settle a tariff war with Washington. The world’s second-largest economy expanded by 6.6 percent over a year earlier, down from 2017′s 6.9 percent, official data showed Monday. Growth in the three months ending in December dipped to 6.4 percent — the lowest quarterly level since the 2008 global crisis — from the previous quarter’s 6.5 percent. Communist leaders are trying to steer China to slower, more self-sustaining growth based on consumer spending instead of trade and investment. But the deceleration has been sharper than expected,...

The US Navy could still send an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait in spite of Chinese military technology advances which pose a greater threat to American warships than ever before, the US chief of naval operations has said. Such an operation would inevitably increase the risk of military conflict between the world's largest superpowers, which are currently locked in an escalating trade war and ongoing disputes over territorial claims in the South China Sea. Washington sent ships through the strategic waterway, which separates Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, three times last year, but has not dispatched a carrier in...

The U.S. Navy’s top surface warfare officer has issued a call to action — or a warning — to his crews: They need to develop a “sense of urgency” regarding the Russian and Chinese navies. In an address to the Surface Navy Association in Washington, D.C., this week, Vice Adm. Richard Brown said that U.S. warship crews, for the first time since the Cold War, must make ready for aggressive actions by adversaries with peer or near-peer capabilities at sea, such as when a Chinese navy destroy came within yards of ‘scraping paint’ off a U.S. destroyer last fall in...

The China National Space Agency's Chang'e 4 lander is exploring the mysterious side of our lunar neighbor that faces away from Earth. It also had some unusual guests on board and -- in a first for the moon -- one of them sprouted. Xinhua announced the sprout Tuesday and posted a series of progress images covering the course of nine days and showing a seedling reaching up inside the habitat. The experiment didn't last long A team from Chongqing University in China developed a sealed biosphere habitat stocked with seeds, fruit fly eggs and yeast that it hoped would create...

Měnglà, Ebola and the lesser-known Marburg are all related as members of the filovirus family. There is no evidence yet that it has spread to humans. Filoviruses are extremely pathogenic and can cause severe fevers that are often fatal. It is at least the seventh filovirus that has been found, of which four are known to cause disease in people, according to the CDC. Like Měnglà, Ebola is thought to have originated in bats. The viruses are typically spread by infected bodily fluids. Researchers are now focusing their efforts on understanding how bats could contribute to a possible epidemic.

When Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, warned investors on Wednesday that the company was facing slowing sales in China, the wider world seemingly greeted the news that Apple had lost its China mojo with shock. But for those who are smartphone users in China, the news just confirmed what we already knew: China’s domestic brands have made huge strides in the years since 2012, creating new features and products that take into account what Chinese users want, for a small fraction of the price. Apple, meanwhile, has mostly failed to localize or reinvent itself, on the assumption that global cachet...

China has passed a new law that seeks to "Sinicize" Islam within the next five years, the latest move by Beijing to rewrite how the religion is practised. China's main English newspaper, Global Times, reported on Saturday that after a meeting with representatives from eight Islamic associations, government officials "agreed to guide Islam to be compatible with socialism and implement measures to Sinicize the religion." The newspaper did not provide further details or the names of the associations that agreed to the decree.