Tag: All Regions

A new wave of purges has engulfed the senior leadership of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army. Since the 20th National Party Congress in October 2022, more than 20 senior PLA officers from all four services—the army, navy, air force, and rocket force—have disappeared from public view or been removed from their posts. The absences of other generals have also been reported, which could foreshadow additional purges. Most notably, since the fall of 2023, three of the six uniformed members…

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on July 17 threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal after it published a story about an alleged off-colour letter written by him to late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman. The Journal story, which quickly reverberated around the US capital, says the note to Epstein bearing Mr Trump’s signature was part of a collection of notes for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper says it reviewed…

When a major study appears in JAMA Psychiatry—a high-profile journal that shapes headlines and clinical decisions—its findings carry weight. So when Kalfas and colleagues released what they billed as the most comprehensive analysis of antidepressant withdrawal to date, it drew immediate attention. The study concluded that symptoms were generally “mild,” short-lived, and possibly amplified by nocebo effects—positioning itself as the last word on the subject. The authors mobilised a rapid media campaign to shape the public narrative, with the Science Media Centre issuing…

LONDON – Details of more than 100 British nationals including spies and special forces soldiers were included in one of the country’s worst ever data breaches that led to thousands of Afghans being relocated to the UK, British media reported on July 17. The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which surfaced on Facebook a year later, prompted the relocation of more than 16,000 Afghans to Britain as of May this year amid concerns that they would…

BUCHAREST – Romania’s top court on Thursday struck down a challenge brought by centrist President Nicusor Dan against a bill seeking harsher punishment for antisemitism and hate speech after a divisive election in which the far right gained ground. Parliament updated legislation outlawing the celebration of fascist leaders or imagery in June, introducing prison sentences for the promotion of antisemitism and xenophobia via social media platforms. The bill also increases jail terms for creating or belonging to racist organisations. However,…

The closure of university chemistry departments and courses in the UK is leading to the emergence of ‘cold spots’, areas where the subject cannot be studied within a reasonable travel time, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has warned. Currently, these chemistry cold spots, where travel time by car to the nearest university with an active chemistry undergraduate course exceeds an hour (see figure below), are emerging in East Yorkshire and the Humber, with the closure of the University of…

By Emmanuel Kwada ‎TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media giant, is under fire again as Austria-based privacy group Noyb (None of Your Business) filed fresh complaints against the company on Thursday, accusing it of violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ‎The complaints, also targeting AliExpress and WeChat, claim the companies failed to comply with data access requests, obstructing European users’ rights to understand how their personal data is processed. ‎Noyb, a prominent advocate for online privacy, previously filed complaints…

ATHENS – Greek police have arrested five people over the killing of a University of California at Berkeley professor who was shot dead in an Athens suburb earlier in July, police said. The professor’s ex-wife, who has denied any wrongdoing, her Greek partner, and three other people – one Bulgarian and two Albanian nationals – were arrested on Wednesday evening over the incident, a police official said on Thursday. The woman’s partner has confessed to shooting the academic, a 43-year-old…

WASHINGTON – In clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale. On July 14, for instance, in letting Mr Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling. What the order did not include…

BRUSSELS – The EU’s General Court upheld on Wednesday a European Parliament (EP) decision requiring the estate of late French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen to repay 303,200 euros ($352,380) for wrongly claimed expenses during his time as a member of the parliament. After Le Pen died in January 2025 aged 96, his daughters Yann and Marie-Caroline and granddaughter Marion continued the legal challenge he had begun in January 2024. Le Pen, who founded the National Front political party that…

BRUSSELS – The EU has imposed sanctions on eight people and one entity responsible for the targeting of Iranian dissidents for assassination on behalf of Iran’s government, the European Council said in a statement on Tuesday. The sanctions, over what it called “serious human rights violations” and “transnational repression”, included asset freezes and travel bans, the council said. The Council listed the Zindashti Network, which it said was a criminal group connected to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security…

Employees at the embattled US National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports fundamental research, were all set to follow the lead of workers at two other science agencies and publish a statement warning about concerning developments under the Trump administration. But that effort has been indefinitely delayed. The Alexandria Declaration, named after the agency’s headquarters in Virginia, was expected to be issued on 14 July but is on ‘indefinite hold’, according to Stand Up for Science, which is organising the effort….

Uber and China’s Baidu will partner to deploy thousands of Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform across several international markets outside the US and China, the companies said on July 15. The first roll-outs are expected in Asia and the Middle East later in 2025. The tie-up brings together Uber’s massive ride-hailing network with Baidu’s fleet of more than 1,000 fully driverless vehicles across the world. It is the latest in a series of efforts by Uber…

Black eye makeup, or kohl, used between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE in the north-west of Iran contained natural graphite and manganese oxide, according to analysis carried out at the University of Tübingen, Germany. The results provide the first material insight into cosmetic practices in the Iron Age Middle East, the researchers said. For ancient Egypt, kohl recipes have been well-studied and known to use a range of inorganic and organic materials; however, for the ancient Near East and…

By Lucia Sinatra at brownstone dot org. It was nerve wracking, to say the least; having a high school student who had gotten into his dream college in mid-December 2020 but was uncertain if he could attend the following fall due to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Those harrowing days and nights we spent focusing on little else as we scoured college websites to eventually find what we pretty much expected would come to pass. It started in April of 2021 when…

Delta Air Lines Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, has agreed to pay $8,100,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by awarding compensation to certain corporate officers and employees that exceeded the compensation limits Delta agreed to as part of its participation in the Department of the Treasury’s Payroll Support Program (PSP). The PSP was established by Congress in March 2020 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to provide payroll support to passenger and…