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SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - A former Canadian diplomat has been detained in China, two sources said on Tuesday, and his current employer, the International Crisis Group, said it was seeking his prompt and safe release. Michael Kovrig’s detention comes after police in Canada arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] on Dec. 1 at the request of U.S. authorities, a move that infuriated Beijing. It was not immediately clear if the cases were related, but the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver has stoked fears of reprisals against the foreign business community in China.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said Monday that the internet giant steers clear of 'political bias,' arguing that this is a core principle of its business to maintain trust of users. Pichai also said privacy and security are essential parts of Google's mission, and that the company is committed to working with the US government 'to keep our country safe and secure.' The prepared remarks released Monday, a day ahead of Pichai's appearance at the House Judiciary Committee, come with Google under fire on several fronts, on issues around political bias, data security and its domination of internet search. Pichai...

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Somebody out there apparently does not want President Trump to make a trade deal with China. Just after U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to suspend the implementation of new tariffs for 90 days, one of China’s most important tech executives was literally kidnapped as she was changing planes in Canada. Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was simply on her way to Mexico, but at the urging of U.S. authorities the Canadians grabbed her and are refusing to let her go. Reportedly, the plan is to extradite her to the United States where...

The eulogies for George H.W. Bush keep rolling in, and a great American hero's life has been given proper tribute. But there has also been a rewriting of history about the Bush presidency that needs to be cleared up. Liberals love Bush for the very tax increase betrayal that destroyed his presidency. This was the official end of the Reagan era. This was not just the political blunder of the half-century, it was a fiscal policy catastrophe. Most readers under the age of 40 have no idea the real story of what happened. What the history books are writing is...

A preliminary investigation has found that a gasket failure caused a chemical gas leak that forced the temporary closure of a heavily used bridge connecting Delaware and New Jersey on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Officials with Croda Inc. said Tuesday that initial findings show that an incorrect gasket fitted on a pipe during construction of its Delaware ethylene oxide production plant failed Sunday. The company is sending the gasket to independent experts for analysis and confirmation.

Executive Summary The nation has steadily improved its ability to respond to major disasters and the power outages that often result. But increasing threats—whether severe natural disasters, cyber-physical attacks, electromagnetic events, or some combination—present new challenges for protecting the national power grid and recovering quickly from a catastrophic power outage. The President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) was tasked to examine the nation’s ability to respond to and recover from a catastrophic power outage of a magnitude beyond modern experience, exceeding prior events in severity, scale, duration, and consequence. Simply put, how can the nation best prepare for and...

Fourteen of the 23 GOP members who signed the cheap-labor Discharge Petition amnesty in June will be gone from Congress in January. The group’s wipeout came after they worked with House Speaker Paul Ryan to block the pro-American, compromise immigration reform bill prepared by Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House judiciary committee.

Subsidies: President Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow says subsidies for electric cars and other renewable energy programs might soon be eliminated. That would be a major victory on the road to energy freedom. National Economic Council chief Kudlow, a well-known free marketeer and supply-sider, said subsidies might disappear as soon as 2020 — interestingly, the next presidential election year. The decision comes after General Motors — the beneficiary of $2,500-$7,000 tax credits for those who buy GM's plug-in cars, not to mention two separate corporate tax cuts — decided to close five North American plants, leaving 14,700 workers without jobs....

The Manhattan district attorney’s office and New York state police are expected to arrest several senior executives in former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s finance company on fraud charges Tuesday, The New York Times reported. The executives are expected to be a part of a larger arrest of roughly a dozen senior executives spanning several companies involved in New York real estate and development. The district attorney’s office launched a new investigation into New York’s $62 billion construction industry, including the construction and facilities department of Bloomberg L.P., in 2017. Investigators uncovered a pay-to-play scheme in which subcontractors and...

A post at the Daily Wire asks the question, “Remember When The Left Hated Big Business?” Of course the left loves big business now. They haven’t changed their minds about capitalism. The Democratic Party is now openly and explicitly socialist. It’s even going full Communist, with growing calls to abolish the Second Amendment and to ignore the First Amendment, and with laws against “hate speech”. It’s not that they’ve changed their minds. But the left now controls most of big business. Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google are hard left companies. They want socialism and even Communism for the rest of...

Rep. Adam Schiff, widely expected to take over the House Intelligence Committee next year, said Sunday that President Trump "faces the very real prospect of jail time" once he leaves office.+ Schiff (D-Calif.) said recent memos released by the Southern District of New York and the Mueller team appear to link the president to potential crimes including campaign finance violations. "There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office that the Justice Department may indict him," Schiff said. "He may be the first president in quite some time to face jail time," he added.

When General Motors announced plant closings and a 15% workforce cut, the plan was to plow savings into electric and autonomous vehicle development, which is seen as the industry’s future. But selling electric vehicles (EVs) will get tough without a $7,500 credit that the Trump Administration has said will end. Now GM is fighting to keep the consumer tax credit, reported the Associated Press. [SNIP] Many Republicans say the credit is a subsidy that wastes taxpayer money. The law that provides the credit caps its use when a manufacturer has sold 200,000 vehicles, a number that GM gm is close...

The multitrillion-dollar business of fashion, with its complex and long supply chain, is worryingly vexed with problems contributing to climate change. The fashion industry emits more greenhouse gas than all international flights and maritime shipping journeys combined, and it's estimated that a garbage truck's worth of clothing is either burned or sent to a landfill every second. On top of that, thanks to our powerful washing machines, our clothes pollute the ocean with microfibers equating to approximately 50 million plastic bottles each year. Conversation and action around sustainability and climate change has been quiet and slow to come within the...

Washington - Since the Trump administration released its blockbuster report on the day after Thanksgiving outlining the dire environmental and economic impacts of climate change, it has made a series of policy and diplomatic decisions or statements that appear run counter to all of the warnings in the report. Here's what the administration has said and done since Thanksgiving: Coal rule rollback: The Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed relaxing regulations for newly-built coal-fueled power plants. Combined with another proposal to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, the two rules would overhaul the way coal-fired plants are built and regulated....

There were 1 million more jobs than unemployed workers in the most recent government count of job openings, according to a Labor Department release Monday. Total available jobs stood at 7.08 million for October, the second-highest level surpassed only by the 7.3 million in August, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed. By comparison, there were just 6.08 million Americans classified as unemployed for the month. The survey shows a tightening jobs market at a time when questions are arising over the broader economy's strength. Most economists are expecting a global slowdown that could infect the U.S., which is...

Emails leaked exclusively to Breitbart News reveal that a group of Google employees, with encouragement from the tech giant’s director of monetization, began plotting the downfall of this website shortly after the 2016 election. The group sought to strike at Breitbart News’ revenue by kicking the site off Google’s market-dominating ad services. Although their efforts ultimately failed, the discussion featured senior Google employees speaking frankly about their reasons for targeting the site. These included unfounded allegations of “hate speech” and “fake news.” In the leaked emails, Google employee Richard Zippel advised a fellow employee that Google would act against Breitbart...

What drove down US stocks this week? The answer may be the US bond market and what the shape of the yield curve is - or isn't - telling us about the state of the economy.For most of 2018, the US yield curve has been flattening. This happens when the gap between short- and longer-dated yields narrows, historically a sign that economic growth may be slowing.On Tuesday, a section of the curve briefly inverted, with the yield on the five-year US Treasury note falling slightly below that on the two-year note. That helped spark a 3.2% decline in the S&P...

This article consists of a video found HERE. It's actually a pretty good video. Some comments... Is the Stoner 63 really as good of a gun as everyone says? Today is my first opportunity to try one out on the range, and I’m going to look at it in three different configurations: the Mk23 SEAL light machine gun, the “Bren” style automatic rifle, and the carbine. Let’s see how it handles! I owe a tremendous thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto for the opportunity to take the Stoner kit out to the range! Check them out on Instagram to...

During the construction of London's massive "super sewer," archaeologists discovered something unusual in the mud: a 500-year-old skeleton of a man still wearing his thigh-high leather boots. The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) announced this week that the skeleton was unearthed on the shores of the Thames, near a bend in the river downstream from the Tower of London. "By studying the boots, we've been able to gain a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of a man who lived as many as 500 years ago," said Beth Richardson, a finds specialist who analyzes artifacts at MOLA Headland, a consortium...

The conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi filed a lawsuit on Sunday accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of blackmailing him to lie about President Donald Trump in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The suit, which seeks $350 million in actual and punitive damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, was filed six days after Corsi entered a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct by Mueller. Corsi, 72, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy website InfoWars, accuses Mueller's office of having illegally leaked secret information from the grand jury investigating Russian...