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The removal of the memorials in Hong Kong came after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, leading the local government to essentially ban public commemorations of the 1989 killings. The 2,000-square-foot display includes newspaper clippings, letters written to protesters who were sent to jail, a...

Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old certified fitness instructor and artist who frequently promoted female empowerment on her social media accounts, was accused by Saudi authorities of using a hashtag – translated to #societyisready – to call for an end to male guardianship rules.She has not yet been convicted or sentenced and...

Erin O’Toole says the Canadian spy agency informed him that Beijing’s campaign used social media, specifically the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat. “My parliamentary caucus and myself were the target of a sophisticated misinformation and voter suppression campaign orchestrated by the People’s Republic of China,”...

While many analysts believe – or perhaps hope – that western countries would not weaponise hunger against China in the event of a conflict with Taiwan, the war in Ukraine has shown that energy is highly likely to be hit with sanctions. And unlike Russia, with its vast reserves of natural gas, China is dependent on other...

Stories told to children who lived under the Russian occupation in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province were designed to terrify them. When the fast-approaching Ukrainian forces came into Kherson, people added, they would hurt anyone who had been in contact with the Russians. The web of lies were often spun by the children’s...

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them borrowed from China under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). An analysis has found paying back this debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open,...

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia’s Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017. The 56-year-old maintains his innocence and insists the information in question wasn’t classified and was freely available...

The daughter of Nikolai Gusev, director of the Vympel Design Bureau, which designs and produces the missiles used by the Russian army, has been living in Florida since 2021. The 20-year-old student Natalia Guseva rents an appartment in Miami for $3,500 a month, while a year of study at the University of Miami costs the family...

The China Labour Bulletin recorded 108 factory workers’ protests since early January, more than twice the amount recorded in all of 2022. Reduced orders from international buyers and poor economic conditions have led factories to lay off workers, relocate to reduce costs, or shut down altogether, the Bulletin says.

In theory, the import of drones into Russia should have been choked off by Western sanctions. In practice, however, it is clear that avenues for their procurement remain open for drones as well ad advanced microchips - used in everything from missiles to demining robots. They are flowing into Russia from abroad through companies...

Contrary to its promise, the German company not only continued its deliveries, but also began exporting laser rangefinder binoculars and night vision scopes. Laser rangefinders and levels from the Swiss company Leica Geosystems are also making their way into Russia, albeit through third countries. The equipment may have military...

Russia’s official public services portal, Gosuslugi, notified users of an upcoming forum titled “Strong ideas for a new era” and invited them to submit “an idea, a public initiative, or a project” that would contribute to “the country’s development” on an online platform created for the event....

Ann Widdecombe, who joined the Reform UK party this year, made the comments when she was asked what she would say to consumers who could not afford to pay for basics such as the ingredients of a cheese sandwich. The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, Sarah Olney, said: “How out of touch can you get? Ann Widdecombe joins a...

As the brutal war against Ukraine costs Russia’s army ever more casualties, recruitment drives for fresh replacements are now turning to migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus to fill the boots of the dead left behind by their prospective comrades. Meanwhile, Mikhail Matveyev, a Duma member, criticised "naturalised...

Chinese authorities raided three advisory firms over the past few months which offered investigative and strategic analysis for the Chinese market to foreign investors. Their staff -all Chinese nationals- were detained, one of them was sentenced to six years in prison for “stealing national secrets”. Alfred Wu, a researcher...

Drawn up in 2021 by the Kremlin’s Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation, the Kremlin’s plans do not focus on cooperation. “This is the old KGB method: ‘We should weaken our enemies. And the best way to weaken them is from inside, not from outside.’ What they are good at is dividing societies, creating problems,...

Twitter user Carl Zee outlined the situation in a series of May 11 posts accompanied by a memo from the Florida Department of Education. Zee explains, “My friend showed Disney’s Strange World in a Florida classroom and one student reported it to their parents. Now she’s under investigation by the state. Florida is not safe...

Hideji Suzuki, the former President of Japan China Youth Exchange had been locked up in a ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location’ (RSDL) facility for the seven months. RSDL is a notorious system where the suspect is kept incommunicado without access to a lawyer for months at a time. It is a system that has been...

On Sunday, Russia was accused of using phosphorus on the besieged city of Bakhmut, with Ukraine releasing footage purporting to show it raining down on its positions. Phosphorus creates flash fires that are incredibly hard to put out. If people are hit with the chemical they suffer horrendous burns, which actually accelerate if...

Bank shareholders and executives should bear the risks of mismanagement, the Berkshire Hathaway chair and CEO says, with vice chair Charlie Munger criticising that executives are more concerned with getting rich than with customers.

Regarding protesters who were holding up signs reading ‘Not My King’ near Buckingham Palace during Saturday’s coronation, Tory MP Lee Anderson wrote on Twitter: “If you do not wish to live in a country that has a monarchy the solution is not to turn up with your silly boards.” Meanwhile, human rights organisations...

The Communist Party has been widening the legal landscape for imposing exit bans and is increasing their use against human rights defenders and their families, for holding people hostage to force targets overseas to come back to China -a practice called ‘persuade to return’, a form of transnational repression-, controlling...