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Tim Cook will mark his five-year anniversary as the CEO of Apple by doing something that his predecessor Steve Jobs typically avoided: hosting a fundraiser for a presidential candidate. On Wednesday, Cook and Lisa Jackson, Apple's (AAPL, Tech30) head of environmental initiatives, will host an event in California to raise money for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Those invited have reportedly been asked to contribute as much as $50,000. Cook is just the latest in a growing list of tech executives and venture capitalists working to raise big money to help Clinton beat Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked tech companies...

Recent pictures from China confirm that the first hull of the next generation Type 055 Guided-Missile Destroyer (DDG) for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) entered final assembly stage at the Jiangnan Changxing naval shipyard located near Shanghai. The information is reported from our colleagues from East Pendulum. Through photos taken by Shanghai-based spotters, we can witness the chronological assembly of the first Chinese destroyer displacing over 10,000 t: October 2015: Type 055's First construction block emerges May 2016: Spotter's picture showing an entire section: Large aft module showing an helicopter pad (left) and hangar (right) at...

Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors: The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a...

China wants to have closer military ties with Syria, state media on Tuesday cited a senior Chinese officer as saying during a rare visit to the war-torn Middle Eastern country. While relying on the region for oil supplies, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia. But China has been trying to get more involved, including sending envoys to help push for a diplomatic resolution to the violence there and hosting Syrian government and opposition figures. …

The world's second-largest economy aims to use the power of particle physics through photons to send the encryption keys necessary to decode information. The launch of Micius - named after a 5th Century BC Chinese scientist - took place in the early hours of Tuesday in the southwestern Gobi Desert, according to Xinhua, China's state news service. It will be used in experiments aimed at proving the viability of quantum technology to communicate over long distances. Unlike traditional secure communication methods, it is impossible to intercept the data held in the bursts of subatomic particles because any attempts at eavesdropping...

Since the beginning of this year, I have been sharing with you the growing concerns of Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong as regards the Vatican’s increasingly conciliatory stance with the Chinese government, which controls the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, an ersatz replacement for the true Chinese Catholic Church, which has been forced underground, and is regularly persecuted. In January, Cardinal Zen warned about a new “formula” allegedly under discussion at the time for the appointment of new Chinese bishops: A recent article “A winter of darkness for religions in China” by Bernardo Cervellera on AsiaNews, says: “From information that has...

China is eyeing the use of a high level of artificial intelligence and automation for its next generation of cruise missiles, a senior designer was quoted as saying on Friday. "We plan to adopt a 'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions," Wang Changqing of the China Aerospace and Industry Corp told the state-run China Daily newspaper. "Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation," Wang added. "They will allow commanders to control them...

The fight against the Islamic State may get the headlines. But it’s the military threats from Russia and China that most worry top Pentagon officials — and are driving a new arms race to deter these great-power rivals. This question of how to deal with Russian and Chinese military advances has gotten almost no attention in the 2016 presidential campaign. But it deserves a careful look. The programs begun in the waning days of the Obama administration could potentially change the face of warfare, in the United States’ favor, but they would require political support and new spending by the...

CHINA could match the military might of the US in a decade and any conflict between them would rock the entire world economy. That is the frightening warning issued by research organisation, Rand Corporation, which highlights how the US and China remain at loggerheads over several regional disputes with large military forces operating closely together. In its new report War With China, Thinking Through the Unthinkable, Rand warn any conflict would ultimately be intense, destructive and protracted. “If an incident occurred or a crisis overheated, both have an incentive to strike enemy forces before being struck by them,” the report...

You may well have never thought about it but people born in China since 1980 have no siblings. China is a society with no aunts, uncles or cousins. Ever consider that that? For the most part if you are 34 years or younger you have no brothers or sisters. Neither does anybody else. Meaning no aunts, uncles or cousins... To make matters worse, restricting families to just one child placed a disproportionate value on baby boys, particularly in rural areas. Boys are stronger, boys can do more work. Of China’s 3+ decades of state-forced abortions or infanticide, the overwhelming majority...

In a sign of just how much Chinese money is now shaping the electric vehicle industry, it’s been revealed that Karma Automotive and Faraday Future will both be building new manufacturing facilities in the same Chinese city, according to recent reports. Despite developing these new facilities in the same city (Hangzhou), it should be noted that the companies don’t seem to have any funding in common — Karma Automotive is backed by Wanxiang, but Faraday Future by LeEco. Karma ReveroWith regard to the Karma Automotive facility, Wanxiang recently applied for the environmental-impact review of a proposed site in Hangzhou for...

It seems if the People’s Republic of China is going to make a push to radically alter the status-quo in the South China Sea—by reclaiming the hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal that is clearly within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Philippines—we now have a good idea of when that might happen: sometime between early September, after the G-20 summit being hosted in China, and the U.S. presidential election on November 8th. The idea was laid out in a recent article in the South China Morning Post in an article dated August 13th. The report, quoting “a source familiar with...

In the People’s Republic of China, archives do not belong to the people, they belong to the Communist Party. They are often housed in a special building on the local party committee premises, which are generally set among lush and lovingly manicured grounds guarded by military personnel. Access would have been unthinkable until a decade or so ago, but over the past few years a quiet revolution has been taking place, as increasing quantities of documents older than 30 years have become available for consultation to professional historians armed with a letter of recommendation. The extent and quality of the...

You see I am not just your God I AM your friend. I do things for you that others would not consider because of the cost but I have already laid down my life for you and that is why I send my angels to shut the mouth of the lions for you and turn impossible situations around even without your request at times for truly My name is Prince of Peace and Grace is the scepter I apply to the ones that call me Lord and Savior. John 15:15 15 I do not call you servants any longer, for...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the Port of San Francisco destroyed numerous illegal containers imported into the U.S from China. These containers contained rat meat! The strange thing about this is the plan this rat meat to be sold as chicken meat. The idea was the nasty meat to be shipped to different points in several states, and to be sold as chicken. The FDA states that there is a possibility of another 300,000 lbs. of this meat being offered in groceries and restaurants across the U.S. The FDA inspector, Ronal Jones, claims that if cooked completely, this...

China recently produced another “carrier killer” destroyer, the latest in an ever-expanding fleet of Chinese ships capable of threatening American naval power in the highly-contested Asia Pacific. The eleventh People’s Liberation Army Navy Type 052D Luyang III-class destroyer, an elite class of guided-missile destroyers, took to the waters just last week. As is, China already has more of these ships than Japan has Aegis destroyers. The newest addition to China’s collection of Type 052D destroyers was built by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (DSIC). This is the second ship of this type that DSIC has completed. The first is currently in...

Alex LockieAugust 10, 2016 As part of the Continuous Bomber Presence mission in the Pacific, the US has regularly kept bombers stationed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, but in the last few days the fleet of aging B-52 bombers has been replaced with newer B-1 and B-2 bombers. The bombers were positioned in the Pacific by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which commands fleets of bombers, many of which are nuclear-capable, to maintain stability and deter potential threats. Though these deployments are routine, they are likely to raise eyebrows in Beijing, where China has defiantly ignored a ruling from...

China's military is likely to deploy the Type-96B tank as the pillar of its tank fleet, replacing most of its old models, observers said. Gao Zhuo, a military observer in Shanghai who has close contact with the People's Liberation Army, told China Daily that the excellent capabilities of the Type-96B qualify it to be the backbone of China's tank force. "The Type-96B is the strongest variant of the Type-96 family and is truly an advanced, third-generation main battle tank," he said. "The PLA will use it to replace the old tanks such as the Type-59 and Type-69 models." His remarks...

A Chinese tourist spent nearly two weeks in a German migrant hostel after mistakenly applying for asylum when he actually wanted to report a theft... A translation app confirmed Mr Schluetermann's suspicions that the tourist had got entangled in the asylum system by mistake. "It came up with phrases like 'I want to go on a trip abroad'," he said. It emerged that the tourist had plans to visit Italy and France.

Vietnam has discreetly fortified several of its islands in the disputed South China Sea with new mobile rocket launchers capable of striking China's runways and military installations across the vital trade route, according to Western officials. Diplomats and military officers told Reuters that intelligence shows Hanoi has shipped the launchers from the Vietnamese mainland into position on five bases in the Spratly islands in recent months, a move likely to raise tensions with Beijing.