Free Republic

China says its uncrewed craft has successfully landed on the far side of the Moon - an unexplored place almost no-one tries to go. The Chang'e 6 touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin at 06:23 Beijing time on Sunday morning (22:23 GMT Saturday), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said. Launched on 3 May, the mission aims to collect precious rock and soil from this region for the first time in history. The probe could extract some of the Moon's oldest rocks from a huge crater on its South Pole.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused China on Sunday of helping Russia to disrupt an upcoming Swiss-organized peace conference on the war in Ukraine. Speaking at Asia’s premier security conference, Zelenskyy said that China is pressuring other countries and their leaders not to attend the upcoming talks. He did not say which ones. ... The Swiss had been hoping China would attend the peace conference in mid-June, but Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning signaled on Friday that that was unlikely. China has been calling for a peace conference with equal participation of all sides, including Russia, which has not been...

Every year ahead of the June 4 commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government tightens online censorship to suppress domestic discussion of the event. Critics, dissidents and international groups anticipate an uptick in cyber activity ranging from emails with malicious links to network attacks in the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary.Much of this cyber activity by Beijing is done covertly. But a recent restructuring of China’s cyberforce and a document leak exposing the activities of Chinese tech firm i-Soon have shed some light on how Beijing goes about the business of hacking.As a China expert...

Most states spy. In principle there’s nothing to stop them. But China’s demand for intelligence on the rest of the world goes far beyond anything western intelligence agencies would typically gather. It encompasses masses of commercial data and intellectual property and has been described by Keith Alexander, a former head of the National Security Agency, as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” As well as collecting data from government websites, politicians, universities, think tanks and human rights organizations, China also targets Chinese diaspora groups and individuals. Congress has just cracked down on the Chinese-owned TikTok, which has admitted that...

China’s top-secret spaceplane has released a mysterious object into Earth’s orbit just 372 miles above the surface. The US Space Force is monitoring the situation, but the purpose of the object ejected on May 24 is unknown. A Harvard astrophysicist first spotted the object, speculating it could be a subsatellite deployment, or a piece of hardware ejected before the spaceplane ends its mission and deorbits.

Over the last few weeks, a Russian blitz has claimed more than a dozen villages in northeast Ukraine, near the country’s second-largest city. This summer, Russia will likely continue its offensive push... Russia’s ability to carry out these attacks is in some ways surprising. War is expensive...Yet Moscow has managed to keep paying for its war machine.... to China, the benefits of a Russian victory in Ukraine may outweigh the costs. Among those benefits: The war has entangled the U.S. and its allies in a faraway conflict, straining the U.S. military’s ammunition stockpiles. It has made Russia, a big military...

Commander Daryl Caudle said breaches are seen every week amid an 8,000% surge in Chinese migrants at the southern border...Commander Caudle said attempted infiltrations are happening 'two or three times a week' - at Navy bases alone....the perpetrators often claiming to be innocent tourists when caught...A lot of times they have passports, they have papers, but they are in no way shape or form authorized to be on our base. Operatives from Communist China have been caught scuba diving close to Cape Canaveral, wandered on to a missile launch site in New Mexico, and claimed to be looking for Holiday...

Late last year, a CNA crew travelled to North and South America to document the journeys of Chinese citizens crossing borders as illegal immigrants. The team behind Walk The Line now shares how the series was made.In Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, there can be found a guest house catering almost exclusively for Chinese travellers. Last December, when it also accommodated a film crew from CNA, the usual suspects were rather concerned. “As soon as we checked in and the people in the guest house knew that we were journalists, … people were tense. They’re like, ‘Why are there journalists here?’”...

A man killed eight people and wounded one more with a knife in central China, state media reported on Friday (May 24), citing local authorities. The stabbing took place on Thursday morning in the city of Xiaogan in Hubei province, state broadcaster CCTV said. The 53-year-old attacker surnamed Lu had previously been treated for mental illness, it added. He is being held by police, who are investigating the attack.

In mid-2022, Gazprom restricted gas flows to Europe in what was seen as a move by Putin to get both leverage against Kyiv's allies ahead of the winter season and retaliate against Western sanctions and support of Ukraine. But the EU managed to find alternative long-term sources of gas imports and free itself from most Russian piped-gas imports ... Gazprom's revenue fell by 41 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2023, while sales profits dropped 71 percent and gas production by 25 percent... The report said the company's upstream gas-production base is now isolated because infrastructure connecting its main...

Where did China get the idea to dominate specific sectors of the tech industry by pushing out US competitors? The plan, known as "Made in China 2025," was at least partly inspired by a 300-page book written for them by McKinsey and Company, an American strategy and management consulting firm. The Financial Times was the first to report on McKinsey's contribution to China's 13th five-year plan back in February.A McKinsey-led think-tank advised China to deepen co-operation between business and the military and push foreign companies out of sensitive industries as part of a project for the central government in 2015.The...

* Chipmakers ASML and TSMC can disable advanced chipmaking machines remotely, Bloomberg reports. * The move addresses growing fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a key semiconductor producer. * A China-Taiwan conflict could severely impact the global economy. Two of the world's most important chip companies can flip a "kill switch" remotely on their most advanced chipmaking machines should China invade Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Netherlands' ASML — Europe's top tech company by market value — supplies advanced machines to chipmaking companies. They include Taiwan's TSMC, which produces, by some estimates,...

A fascinating video that draws all of the parts of the India/China/Regional disputes into focus, and the consequences of each outcome.

Elon Musk’s Tesla is continuing to lay off employees as the company has slashed an additional 600 jobs across its California facilities, affecting a wide range of positions from factory workers to engineers. CNBC reports that Tesla has been grappling with a series of challenges that have led to multiple rounds of layoffs over the past month. The latest round of layoffs, reported in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act filing obtained by CNBC, impacted a wide range of positions, from entry-level roles to directors, spanning various departments such as factory workers, software developers, and robotics engineers. This...

In an unexpected moment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to his leader, Vladimir Putin, as Chinese President Xi Jinping's "donkey" and admitted that nothing now depends on Moscow. He made the eyebrow-raising comment in response to a question from a Russian propagandist about an informal meeting planned after the official talks during Putin’s visit to Beijing. “You know, as they say in the East, the guest is the master's donkey. Therefore, of course, all programs depend on the kind offers that the Chinese president and his team have made to our president,” Lavrov explained, offering a glimpse into the...

Switzerland agreed to buy F-35 jet fighters to park on a remote runway. Then the U.S. zeroed in on the Wangs, who owned the rustic hotel next door. UNTERBACH, — The Hotel Rössli, a century-old lodge in this Alpine valley village, enjoys a spectacular view . ... But it is the view from the back that caught the attention of American intelligence agencies. About 100 yards from the rear of the rustic, wood-paneled inn .. cuts the runway where the Swiss military had agreed to base several F-35s, the world’s most advanced jet fighter. The airstrip, only partly fenced, is...

"Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants," read a tweet issued by the Subcommittee on May 15. Senator @RandPaul (R, KY), who has been the most ardent member of Congress demanding answers for the pandemic since its outbreak, celebrated the news with a tweet of his own. Paul wrote, "Finally, the Biden Admin. agrees to ban Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, who financed the...

President Joe Biden issued an order on Monday forcing a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining company to sell land near a Wyoming nuclear missile base, citing national security concerns. The company, MineOne, acquired the real estate in June 2022, placing its operations within a mile of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, a “strategic missile base and key element of America’s nuclear triad,” according to the White House. The company’s site contained “specialized and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities,” the presidential order said.

Authorities in China were expected on Monday to release a citizen journalist jailed for four years after she documented the early phases of the coronavirus outbreak from the central city of Wuhan in 2020. Zhang Zhan, 40, had travelled to Wuhan in early 2020 from Shanghai where she was based, posting first-hand accounts ... After several months of reporting that included videos.. she was detained in May 2020. She went on hunger strike in late June, court documents seen by Reuters said, prompting police to strap her hands and force-feed her with a tube, her lawyers said at the time....