Free Republic

According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on 18 January. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant – set in motion countermeasures. Troops under the command of Cao Qi, head of Xi’s Central Guards Bureau, ambushed Zhang’s soldiers. In the ensuing gunfight at Yangxi Hotel, nine guards were reportedly killed along with dozens of Zhang Youxia’s soldiers. Throughout China, military movements have...

“IN AN UNCERTAIN world, China is the biggest certainty.” So proclaimed a Chinese spokesman in December. Amid a war in Europe, turmoil in the Middle East and America’s rewriting of the geopolitical order, some in the West may be inclined to agree. As The Economist went to press, Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was visiting China’s president, Xi Jinping, the latest among a series of Western leaders who have headed to Beijing in search of deals and dependability. Yet in recent days politics in China has proved anything but certain. On January 24th the defence ministry said that the...

Two years ago, Zakia Khan and her son Ahsan Ijaz hosted an NYPD promotion ceremony for the first Pakistani inspector in the New York City police department. After an Imam recited a prayer and everyone, including NYPD personnel, rose and put their hands on their hearts for the Pakistani national anthem, hailing Pakistan as the ‘citadel of Islam’ in the “shadow of Allah.” Last year, Khan pleaded guilty to a $68 million Medicaid fraud scheme involving her adult day care centers, which had been the sponsors of the NYPD event, and earlier this year more members of the Muslim fraud...

Geneva (AFP) – UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for a fightback against climate disinformation ahead of next month's COP30 summit after US President Donald Trump branded climate change the "greatest con job ever". Guterres issued a robust defence of "clear-eyed" climate science and data, without which, he said, the world would never have understood the emergence of the "dangerous and existential threat of climate change". "We must fight mis- and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing," Guterres said at the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) weather and climate agency. "Scientists and researchers should never fear telling the truth." The...

Demonstrators in Paraguay have set fire to the country's Congress amid violent protests against a bill that would let the president seek re-election. Protestors stormed the legislature, breaking windows and fences. The countries 1992 constitution, introduced after 35 years of dictatorship, strictly limits the president to a single five-year term. But sitting President Horactio Cartes is attempting to remove the restriction and run for re-election. Protestors were photographed smashing in windows of the congress building in Asuncion on Friday night and setting fire to the interior.

On a training exercise from its home port in Guam, USS Minnesota is a forerunner to four Virginia class submarines that will be hosted at a Western Australian naval base from 2027, under the AUKUS partnership to transfer nuclear submarine capability to Australia. Commanding officer Jeffrey Corneille says the Virginia class submarine is “the most advanced warship in the world.” “If someone wakes up and they say ‘Is today the day?’, we make sure that they say ‘Maybe not’,” he says, describing its deterrent role. Around 50-80 United States navy personnel will arrive by the middle of the year at...

Long before Stephen Harper’s Conservative government launched the multi-billion-dollar Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2007, it was already commonplace to refer to the legacy of those schools as a “dark chapter in Canadian history.” There was much that was dark about the schools. Many of the church-run, federally-administered institutions, whatever the good intentions of the religious orders that ran them, were dark and forbidding places that incubated disease, cultural dislocation, abuse and despair, for much of their history. Roughly 150,000 children are believed to have attended the schools, which the federal government...

TOKYO -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's expected meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken next week signals his desire to stabilize relations with Washington as he faces economic headwinds at home. The planned reception, first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by U.S. sources, will likely set the tone for China's new foreign policy team -- top diplomat Wang Yi and Foreign Minister Qin Gang -- as they put together their diplomacy playbook. "If President Xi meets Secretary Blinken, it will reinforce to the Chinese government that he is personally engaged in steering the relationship and that any...

During a portion of an interview with NPR aired on Friday’s broadcast of “Morning Edition,” Francois-Regis Mouton, who is the EU Affairs Director for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers, said that Europe won’t be able to supply its gas demand even if it boosts all other alternatives for the next four, five years. While speaking with NPR Correspondent Eleanor Beardsley, Mouton said, “Even if you boost any other alternatives from now on to 2026, 2027, Europe will not be able to supply its gas demand.” Beardsley added that this will mean that “some businesses won’t make it....

“Since the earliest days of the pandemic there were a small number of leading scientists who took it upon themselves to enforce this kind of orthodoxy,” said Jamie Metzl, adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on human genome editing and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank. “We were ostracised and called conspiracy theorists,” he added. Metzl said that a statement in The Lancet in February 2020, signed by 27 prominent scientists, was “a form of scientific thuggery”. It strongly condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. It was organised by Peter Daszak,...

Secret FBI tapes that accuse Martin Luther King Jr of having extramarital affairs with '40 to 45 women' and even claim he 'looked on and laughed' as a pastor friend raped a parishioner, exist an author has claimed. The civil rights hero was also heard allegedly joking he was the founder of the 'International Association for the Advancement of P***y-Eaters'. The shocking files could lead to a 'painful historical reckoning' for the man who is celebrated across the world for his campaign against racial injustice, according to one biographer. The FBI surveillance tapes detailing his indiscretions are being held in...

CHURCHVILLE, VA—My colleague Bennie Peiser, of Britain’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, offers some of his latest man-made global warming news: The Sunday Times noted on May 22 that the UK government has agreed to cut its greenhouse emissions 50 percent by 2027. As a result, “Tata Steel last week announced it was cutting 1,500 jobs at its Scunthorpe and Teeside plants. The company, which employs 21,000 in Britain, has held high-level talks with government in recent weeks over its energy plans. . . . Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe warned that he could be forced to shut the firm’s Runcorn chlorine...

White people 'a minority by 2027' By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:56am BST 31/08/2007 White people living in the UK's second biggest city are likely to find themselves in a minority in 20 years' time, according to researchers. Birmingham is likely to become a minority white city in 2027 A team of demographers from Manchester University has claimed that the number of white people living in Birmingham will be overtaken by the number of those with other ethnic origins by 2027. The news came as it emerged that 35 towns and cities in Britain have at least...