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China has approved the construction of what will be the world's largest hydropower dam, stoking concerns about displacement of communities in Tibet and environmental impacts downstream in India and Bangladesh. The dam, which will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, could generate three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world's largest hydropower plant. ... Reports indicate that the colossal development would require at least four 20km-long tunnels to be drilled through the Namcha Barwa mountain, diverting the flow of the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet's longest river. Experts and officials have also flagged...

The Musée Guimet, a Paris museum known for its rich collection of Asian art, is facing a lawsuit from several groups who accused the institution of trying to “erase the existence of Tibet.” According to the Agence France-Presse, which first reported news of the complaint last week, the suit centers around a gallery devoted to art from Nepal and Tibet. The museum now notes that the gallery focuses on the “Himalayan world,” not Nepal and Tibet specifically, according to the AFP. Doing so, the groups said, could create “confusion about Tibet’s cultural distinctiveness with the political aim of erasing Tibet’s...

On this date in 1964, three officers were executed in Bhutan, including former deputy commander in chief Namgyal Bahadur, for assassinating Prime Minister Jigme Dorji. A member of the powerful Dorji family and brother-in-law to the Bhutanese king, Dorji was overseeing a modernization campaign for the insular Himalayan kingdom. On April 5, 1964, while the king was in Europe for medical treatment, Dorji was shot dead while relaxing on his veranda. No wholesale seizure of power was attempted. The entire affair has long been murky, and it seems it was murky to those involved, too. The assassin, one Zambay,* was...

China has reacted to the announcement from the Dalai Lama that he will be reincarnated after his death and a successor will be appointed. The Tibetan spiritual leader ended years of speculation by saying Wednesday that the next Dalai Lama should be found and recognized according to past Buddhist traditions, signaling that China should stay away from the process. However, China's foreign ministry was quick to issue a statement, saying that the Dalai Lama's reincarnation "must be approved by the central government." "The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and other great Buddhist figures must be chosen by...

For much of the past century, the Dalai Lama has been the living embodiment of Tibet’s struggle for greater freedoms under Chinese Communist Party rule, sustaining the cause from exile even as an increasingly powerful Beijing has become ever more assertive in suppressing it. As his 90th birthday approaches this Sunday, the spiritual leader for millions of followers of Tibetan Buddhism worldwide is bracing for a final showdown with Beijing: the battle over who will control his reincarnation. On Wednesday, the Dalai Lama announced that he will have a successor after his death, and that his office will have the...

Although the Nepalese government resisted pressures to deport back to China the refugees who are already in Nepal, it will deport those of them who will enter Nepal in the future.In October, Bitter Winter reported how President Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal had failed to persuade the authorities of the Himalayan kingdom, under pressure from their own public opinion, to deport back to China under a proposed extradition treaty a good number of the some 20,000 Tibetan refugees living within Nepalese borders. It was an unexpected defeat for the Chinese leader, who reacted very angrily. The CCP, however, never stops...

A strong earthquake shook a high-altitude region of western China and areas of Nepal on Tuesday, damaging hundreds of houses, littering streets with rubble and killing at least 95 people in Tibet. Many others were trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the remote region. Rescue workers climbed mounds of broken bricks, some using ladders in heavily damaged villages, as they searched for survivors. Videos posted by China’s Ministry of Emergency Management showed two people being carried out on stretchers by workers treading over the uneven debris from collapsed homes. At least 130 people have been injured in the earthquake-hit area...

The dam, which will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, could generate three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world's largest hydropower plant. ... The Three Gorges hydropower dam required the resettlement of 1.4 million people. Reports indicate that the colossal development would require at least four 20km-long tunnels to be drilled through the Namcha Barwa mountain, diverting the flow of the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet's longest river. ... Shortly after China announced its plans for the Yarlung Tsangpo dam project in 2020, a senior Indian government official told Reuters that India's...

The newly minted president of George Washington University said he was "personally offended" by art posted around the college's campus condemning China's human rights abuses. "Please know that I am personally offended by the posters. I treasure the opportunity to work with talented people from all over the world, including China," George Washington University President Mark Wrighton wrote in an email. "I, too, am saddened by this terrible event and we will undertake an effort to determine who is responsible." A screenshot of the email was posted to Twitter by the artist behind the posters, known only as Badiucao. He...

WASHINGTON: The Obama White House on Wednesday rolled out the red carpet for Chinese President Hu Jintao months after the US President met Tibetan leader Dalai Lama sans fanfare and photo-ops and showed him out through a side door past garbage bags. The contrasting receptions, recalled vividly by commentators, pretty much summed up the US approach and priorities at a time when China struts the world stage like an economic colossus with military ambitions to match. It would be a stretch to say China owns the US, but it is no great secret that President Hu is being courted, coddled...

Scientists have unearthed the remnants of more than 1,700 viruses from deep inside a glacier in western China. Most of these viruses are new to science. With this discovery, the number of ancient viruses recovered from glaciers has grown fiftyfold.The viruses, gathered from a 1,000-foot ice core taken from the sprawling Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, date back 41,000 years and span three major shifts from cold to warm. Scientists say the viruses differed markedly between colder and warmer eras, noting that a distinct community of viruses formed during the most dramatic of these climatic shifts, at the end...

Qionglin New Village sits deep in the Himalayas, just three miles from a region where a heavy military buildup and confrontations between Chinese and Indian troops have brought fears of a border war. The land was once an empty valley, more than 10,000 feet above the sea, traversed only by local hunters. Then Chinese officials built Qionglin, a village of cookie-cutter homes and finely paved roads, and paid people to move there from other settlements. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls such people “border guardians.” Qionglin’s villagers are essentially sentries on the front line of China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s...

According to a Science Magazine report, Huan Xia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Frido Welker of the University of Copenhagen identified a Denisovan rib bone found in Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau among the remains of yaks, deer, hyenas, wolves, snow leopards, golden eagles, pheasants, and bharal, an animal also known as the blue sheep. The identification of the hominin rib was made through the analysis of proteins in its collagen with zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, or ZooMS. The amino acid sequences in the rib were determined to be a close match to those found in...

President Biden signed a piece of legislation into law on Friday urging China to mend ties with Tibet and its leaders. The legislation, named Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act, received broad bipartisan support and will encourage China and Tibet to resolve the long-standing dispute over Tibet’s governance. President Biden signed a piece of legislation into law on Friday urging China to mend ties with Tibet and its leaders. The legislation, named Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act, received broad bipartisan support and will encourage China and Tibet to resolve the long-standing dispute over Tibet’s governance.

Science Magazine reports that six artifacts discovered in 2020 near the shore of Lake Xiada Co in western Tibet have been identified as stone sewing needles by Yun Chen of Sichuan University and her colleagues. The objects, thought to be about 9,000 years old based upon the radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments and animal bones found with them, are pointed at one end and have a hole in the other. Two of them are intact, and the eyes, or holes, were preserved in four of the needles, which were made of tremolite, serpentine, actinolite, and talc. Examination with ultra-deep-field microscopy...

Joe Biden on Friday delivered remarks at the Friends of Ireland Luncheon as Biden hosts Irish leaders. Earlier Friday Biden hosted Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Ireland for a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office. After his disastrous meeting where he needed a cheat sheet to get by, Biden headed over to the US Capitol for the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon. Critical Medications Every American Can Have On Hand (Including Ivermectin) – And How To Get Them Prescribed Biden spoke for 8 minutes before shuffling away from the lectern. He repeated a dubious story about spending time with China’s Xi...

Tibetans in India on Sunday waved the flag of their homeland in protests marking 65 years since a failed uprising was crushed by China, driving the Dalai Lama and thousands of compatriots to flee. Leaders warned of an "existential threat" to the decades-long struggle by Tibetans in exile to win greater autonomy for a homeland many have never seen. On Sunday, hundreds of Tibetans gathered in the northern Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, the adopted home of the Dalai Lama since he fled Tibet days after the March 10, 1959 uprising.

Located at the intersection of South, Central, and East Asia, the massive Tibetan Plateau is often considered to be Earth's "third pole." A land of large glaciers, permafrost, and heavy snow, the plateau feeds a vast network of rivers, including major waterways like the Ganges, Indus, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow. These rivers, which together make up Asia's "water tower," provide water to nearly 40% of the world's population. The Tibetan Plateau also plays a substantial role in the global climate system by affecting atmospheric circulation and driving weather patterns, such as the Asian summer monsoon, around the planet. And in...

WASHINGTON: The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) is raising serious concerns about the 'search bans' imposed by Twitter on their accounts, as well as other accounts critical of China such as the Central Tibetan Administration. This move effectively silences voices protesting against the Chinese government's genocidal policies on the platform. Searches for East Turkistan Government in Exile, Salih Hudayar, Central Tibetan Administration and other accounts critical of China no longer yield results on Twitter. This unprecedented restriction on visibility comes shortly after Twitter Chairman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with senior Chinese officials in Beijing to expand Tesla's...

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama sparked controversy after he was caught on video asking a young boy to suck his tongue after kissing his lips. The controversial incident happened when the young boy went to pay his respects to the spiritual leader on the stage. The clip, the origin of which is unknown, shows the Dalai Lama sitting on a chair surrounded by other monks. A young boy dressed in an orange colored shirt standing near the spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama is seen kissing the young boy on his lips as others around him break into laughter. The...