Free Republic

Wide-ranging Chinese state rules on what video games can depict are believed to be behind the need to modify Rainbow Six. The revamp would mean Rainbow Six had a "single, global version" so it would be easier to maintain and introduce new features, said Ubisoft. It illustrated its blogpost with images showing what some scenes and icons would look like in the new version. The illustrations depict skulls and knives being swapped for more anodyne images and some elements, such as slot machines, being removed entirely. The modified images and maps will be introduced with the Year 3, Season 4...

A woman using her phone on a ferry in Xiamen, Fujian Province. Apple removed mobile news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month. Credit European Pressphoto Agency Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month. The move limits access to one of the few remaining channels for readers in mainland China to read The Times without resorting to special software. The government began blocking The Times’s websites in 2012,...

Television audiences across China watched an anarchist antihero rebel against a totalitarian government and persuade the people to rule themselves. Soon the Internet was crackling with quotes of “V for Vendetta’s” famous line: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” The airing of the movie Friday night on China Central Television stunned viewers and raised hopes that China is loosening censorship. … The 2005 movie, based on a comic book, is set in an imagined future Britain with a fascist government. The protagonist wears a mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century English...

Columnist Carl Hamilton in Aftonbladet writes about a very troubling conflict between science and politics in Sweden. My translation: The government bans opinions on men's and women's brains In one respect Sweden's government is unique in the world. It has a definite opinion about a scientific controversy: whether women's and man's brains are different, or not. The first time i realised that the government had involved itself in neurobiology, was when gender equality minister [! - ed] Jens Orback in a speech about sexual deviations and living with horses [!!! - ed], affirmed: - The government considers female and male...