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Fearful Americans and overconfident Chinese both believe that China is an unstoppable economic juggernaut “rising” across the Pacific—and poised to displace the U.S. The Chinese government’s willingness to court international condemnation over its violent subjugation of Hong Kong and the Trump administration’s efforts to limit Chinese access to U.S. technology and research universities can both be understood as consequences of this shared belief. Anything is possible. Yet the likelier outcome is that China’s relative economic power will soon hit its zenith before entering a sustained period of decline. American officials should be more sanguine about their global position, while their...

Police arrested dozens of radical pro-abortion feminists Sunday for throwing homemade bombs at government buildings and smashing vehicles during International Women’s Day protests in Mexico and Chile. Reuters reports at least 65 people were injured during the violence in Mexico City, including a female journalist who sustained second-degree burns. In Santiago, Chile, 19 police officers also were injured during the pro-abortion protest there, according to the news outlet. International Women’s Day focuses on a variety of issues, but legalizing the killing of unborn babies in abortions was at the center of many of the protests. Most Central and South American...

South Africa’s state power company intensified rolling blackouts to a record, signaling a deepening crisis at the debt-ridden utility and raising the risk of a second recession in as many years. Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said on Monday it will move to Stage 6 load-shedding from 6 p.m. local time, meaning it will cut 6,000 megawatts from the national grid, after a technical problem at the giant new Medupi Power Station curbed supply. That’s the biggest cut yet. The utility downgraded the status to Stage 4 as of 10 p.m. The utility is curbing power for a fifth straight day...

Rwanda has reopened its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo after closing it for several hours, a reaction to three Ebola cases, two of them fatal, in a border city in the past month. The border was closed after a third case of Ebola was detected in the border city of Goma, which has a population of more than 2 million people and has an international airport. Two people have already died there, according to the BBC. The first confirmed case in Goma was a 46-year-old preacher who managed to pass through three health checkpoints on the way from...

David Simon, creator of the HBO crime series “The Wire,” accidentally proved that President Trump’s tweets about West Baltimore being dangerous were correct when he said Trump would “wet himself” if he “actually visited West Baltimore for five minutes.” Like other liberals suffering from pathological Trump Derangement Syndrome, Simon accidentally dunked on himself yesterday while trying to dunk on Trump.

As my Let Africa Sink essay from 2002(!) is going to feature in my Monday post, I thought I’d take the opportunity to re-publish it below, pretty much un-edited except for a few typos which somehow survived to the present day. Let Africa Sink May 26, 2002 11:40 AM CDT When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (it’s precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared...

According to statistics, cited by the ministry, when the agreement enters into force it will affect more than 1.2 billion people, with a total domestic product of about $3.4 trillion. It will cut duties on 90 percent of goods on the continent. The deal could boost intra-African trade by 52.3 percent, the UN said. Rwandan President Paul Kagame hailed it as a “new chapter in African unity.” The African Union’s trade commissioner Albert Muchanga told Fortune: “When you look at the African economies right now, their basic problem is fragmentation.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to have avoided serious injury after the 71-year-old former Governor of California was blindsided and dropkicked in the back while at an event in South Africa Saturday. The 'Terminator' actor is in Sandton, South Africa, for a sporting event called the Arnold Classic Africa, per The Sandton Chronicle.

Excavations at the Zultepec-Tecoaque archaeological site in Tlaxcala, Mexico, have revealed that indigenous Acolhuas peoples captured a caravan of 550 conquistadors and their allies in 1520, kept them in captivity, and ate them over a period of nine months. And new research suggests that these acts were not random; it seems the Acolhuas people were re-creating their creation myths. Who were the Acolhuas’ Sacrificial Victims? Hernán Cortés , the Spanish usurper of Mexico at the time, was in the caravan to Tenochtitlan but rode ahead to help put down a rebellion in Mexico City before the Acolhuas party struck. The...

Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is flaring up again, with a surge in violence that has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. The attacks, which started on March 30 in Beni, North Kivu, have escalated in recent weeks and could get worse for people that remain trapped between the border of Uganda and an area of DRC that is terrorised by armed groups close to the Ebola outbreak that has claimed 1,000 lives, humanitarian agencies warned on Friday May 3. Over April alone, local health authorities in these areas report that over 60,000 people were displaced,...

Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction. Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter. Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally...

Fox News reports a harrowing scene in South America as a black market for women's hair, sex, and even breast milk crops up in Columbia as neighboring Venezuelan citizens desperately try to make any money they can while trying to survive a nation ravaged by the evils of socialism. According to Fox News' Hollie McKay, "[t]housands upon thousands of Venezuelans pour into Colombia over the crowd cross-country bridge, their faces gaunt, carrying little more than a backpack. Rail-thin women cradle their tiny babies, and beg along the trash-strewn gutters. Teens hawk everything from cigarettes to sweets and water for small change." Men...

Teams of marksmen next year will patrol swaths of Rio de Janeiro with high-powered weapons and a license to kill, said a security adviser to Governor-elect Wilson Witzel. As many as 120 sharpshooters will accompany police incursions into the slums of Brazil’s postcard city to exterminate gun-toting criminals, according to Flavio Pacca, a longtime associate of Witzel who the governor-elect’s press office said will join the administration. The shooters will work in pairs -- one to pull the trigger, one to monitor conditions and videotape deaths. “The protocol will be to immediately neutralize, slaughter anyone who has a rifle,” Witzel,...

Souvla, a Greek restaurant with a devoted following, serves spit-fired meat two ways: in a photogenic sandwich, or on a photogenic salad, either available with a glass of Greek wine. The garnishes are thoughtful: pea shoots, harissa-spiked yogurt, mizithra cheese. The small menu is so appealing and the place itself so charming that you almost forget, as a diner, that you have to do much of the work of dining out yourself. You scout your own table. You fetch and fill your own water glass. And if you’d like another glass of wine, you go back to the counter. Runners...

A U.S. special-operations forces service member was killed and four others were wounded in Somalia Friday after they came under small-arms and mortar fire from suspected members of an al Qaeda affiliate, the Pentagon said. A local service member also died, defense officials said. Three of the wounded U.S. service members and the one local fighter who was wounded in the attack were medically evacuated, the Pentagon said. The fourth wounded U.S. service member was treated in country, the Pentagon said. The attack, at about 2:45 p.m. local time in Jubaland in southwest Somalia, happened during what was supposed to...

What do we know about Noura Hussein? The 19-year-old Sudanese woman is currently on death row in Omdurman, Sudan, for killing a man in self-defense. She was convicted of murdering her husband, who raped her on their “honeymoon.” When she was 16, Noura’s family attempted to force her to marry a man, despite the fact that Islam prohibits marriage without consent. Refusing the marriage, she ran 155 miles away from her family home to a town called Sennar. She lived with her aunt for three years, determined to complete her high school education and with her eyes on further studies....

A REAL-life river monster that has survived since the age of the dinosaurs is being hurriedly eaten towards extinction. The Chinese giant salamander has become the must have delicacy among Far East luxury diners who prize its lean but chewy flesh said to taste like chicken... “The overexploitation of these incredible animals for human consumption has had a catastrophic effect on their numbers in the wild over an amazingly short time-span.

The Rt. Rev. Stephen Dami Mamza, the Catholic bishop of the Yola Diocese, stated: “It is on record that less than one week ago, no fewer than 20 innocent Christian farmers were killed in separate attacks in and around Tambo. Luru village in particular saw its worst days when herdsmen wielding sophisticated firearms stormed the area, killing 15 people. Within the period under review, not less than 10 churches were burnt down, and in some instances, worshippers were killed.” Mamza was apparently careful not to name the persecutors. After all, he doesn’t want to get called on the carpet by...

Michelle Malkin has started a #CoryBookerCaptionContest thread on Twitter. Since Twitter shadow bans people and FreeRepublic does not I figured a photoshop contest here would work out better. It's been too long since we've had a photoshop thread anyways! (For those of you who don't know the story behind this, click here)

With a teacher’s encouragement, seventh-graders in a social-studies class at JHS 80 used their city-issued laptops last week to e-mail letters to The Post to protest a report about their school that cited discipline problems, hazardous conditions, and administrators who try to cover up violent incidents.