Free Republic

The cruise line operator Royal Caribbean has said it will refuse any passengers with Chinese, Hong Kong or Macao passports, regardless of when they were last in China. The remarkable statement comes after reports that about two dozen passengers aboard a cruise ship that docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, on Friday morning were screened for coronavirus and four were sent to a local hospital for further screening. (please see link, for full story)

This is the moment workers connected the two sides of the world's longest sea bridge - seven years after building first began. The last steel box girder was installed for the crossing on Wednesday, which spans the estuary of the Pearl River connecting Hong Kong and China. The project, called Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is 14 miles long and also includes an underwater tunnel. Construction of the Y-shaped bridge began in 2009 at a cost of 100 billion yuan ($15billion). And when the bridge opens to traffic, it will shorten the distance between Hong Kong, Zhuhau and Macao. It will officially...

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Kim Jong-il's oldest son against North Korea dynastic succession The eldest son of Kim Jong-il who was passed over in favour of his younger brother in the race to succeed his father as leader of North Korea, has said that he opposes the idea of a dynastic succession in the secretive Stalinist state. By Peter Foster in Beijing Published: 9:20AM BST 12 Oct 2010 Kim Jong-nam, 39, who lives in the gambling hub of Macao and was once said to be too "wayward" for the leadership, said he did not approve of the hereditary principle that saw his 27-year-old half-brother...

Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort. Though the bid ultimately failed, and there was nothing illegal about the involvement, it drew Giuliani into a complex partnership with the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government. ... Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore...

U.S. to Strike N.Korea Off Terror List Under 'Secret Deal' The U.S. in a closed-doors deal on Oct. 3 agreed to strike North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and suspend the Trading with the Enemy Act by year's end provided North Korea disables its nuclear facilities by then, a senior South Korean official says. The official told Korean reporters in Washington last week the Oct. 3 deal “includes a list of facilities North Korea agreed to disable. It also includes what the other five nations agreed to do, including the issues of striking North Korea from...

CHINA'S relationship with its former satellite North Korea is unravelling fast, underlined by reports yesterday that the People's Bank of China has frozen all North Korea's accounts. South Korean parliamentarian Park Jin said he had learned on a visit to Washington that through its action the Chinese central bank had responded to persistent North Korean counterfeiting of its currency, the yuan. A spokesman for the People's Bank of China yesterday declined to deny Mr Park's claim, saying, however, that the bank had not yet issued a statement confirming the claim. Mr Park's account helps explain why China did not respond...

China has frozen North Korea's account at the Macao branch of the People's Bank of China, Yonhap News reported Monday. A former ranking U.S. official made the revelation to a lawmaker of South Korea's opposition Grand National Party, according to Yonhap.

SEOUL, Jan. 28 (Yonhap) -- A local Internet news site reported Saturday that a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was arrested in Macao earlier this month. Citing Japanese diplomatic sources, DailyNK claimed Kang Sang-choon, a secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chief of staff to Kim, was detained in connection to circulation of forged U.S. dollars and money laundering. DailyNK, which specializes in news related to the reclusive communist country, also said the arrest may have taken place on Jan. 11 and that South Korean and Japanese intelligence services are in the process of...

Beijing - North Korean leader Kim Jong II has disappeared in China. His luxurious special train which reportedly crossed the border into China Tuesday morning at Dandong was nowhere to be found Wednesday. 'We really would like to know where he is, but we simply don't have a clue,' said a South Korean military attache, who added he felt he was left in the lurch by his own intelligence services. Although the train was seen travelling in the direction of Beijing by officials at two railway stations, Kim did not show up in the Chinese capital, sparking a torrent of...