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Last Monday I pointed out that China’s foreign minister Qin Gang had suddenly vanished and hadn’t been seen in three weeks. Officially, he was said to be ill but unofficially there rumors that he’d done something potentially embarrassing to the party. Today, Qin was officially removed from his post and replaced, once again suggesting that whatever led to his disappearance was seen as a career-ending mistake.Mr. Qin was abruptly removed as foreign minister on Tuesday after having disappeared from public view for 30 days. The move ended the career of a diplomat who had leaped to the top as one...

Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang said China is directing the 'full power' of its industries toward AI ... Chinese government is spending three times as much as the U.S. government is to become the world’s undisputed AI leader. "The country that is able to most rapidly and effectively integrate new technology into warfighting wins. If we don’t win on AI, we risk ceding global influence, technology leadership and democracy to strategic adversaries like China," Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, told members of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. "The Chinese Communist Party deeply understands the potential for AI...

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...

A police officer who was injured in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection confronted House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a meeting on Friday, asking him to publicly denounce statements by GOP members who have voted against honoring police and downplayed the violence of the attack. Officer Michael Fanone has said for weeks he wanted to meet with McCarthy, who has opposed the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack and has remained loyal to former President Donald Trump. ...

Nishad Singh is third person in founder’s inner circle agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors ... The collapse of FTX has set off the largest crypto-related bankruptcy ever ... Singh said that in mid-2022 he learned that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research was borrowing FTX customer funds. By September 2022, Alameda was no longer able to repay the billions of dollars that it had taken from FTX, Mr. Singh said. He said that, at the direction of Mr. Bankman-Fried, he falsified FTX’s revenues to make the company more appealing to investors. ... Mr. Singh also pleaded guilty to...

On the same day that that the Bahamas extradited FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to the U.S. to face criminal charges, two former executives at FTX and Alameda Research pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal fraud charges. Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, and FTX co-founder Zixiao (Gary) Wang, also its former chief technology officer, were charged for their roles in contributing to the crypto platform’s collapse. [Snip]

The mystery chunk of animal flesh that washed up on the beach. (@bootscootinaf/TikTok) A huge, smooth, pink, severed flesh-tentacle-thing discovered on a quiet island beach in Australia has drawn speculation over what kind of animal is now missing a piece of its anatomy. The "giant random animal part" was found and filmed by TikTok user Afri Gregory, and has since gone viral with millions of views sparking tons of speculation about whale penises. "It is massive, look! That's my foot. It's like the size of my leg. Eeew. Disgusting!" Gregory exclaimed in the footage, taken on an island off the...

A government official (left) was fired after he was accused of sexual harassment by a woman who eventually beat him with a mop. A government official in northeastern China has been fired after a video emerged of a woman attacking him with a mop while accusing him of sexual harassment. The 14-minute video that went viral shows the official’s subordinate, surnamed Zhou, throwing items on his desk before retrieving a mop to attack the man, surnamed Wang, the deputy director of the poverty alleviation department of Beilin district, in Heilongjiang Province. Read the condensed version of this story, and other...

BREAKING: Joe Biden spoke to South Korean President about North Korean nuclear issue in 14-minute phone call; both agreed to meet shortly after inauguration - @YonhapNews

FED ALERT: Prosecutors questioned Hsiao Yen Wang about a shadowy-seeming Chinatown fund-raiser reported on by The Post. The feds are eyeing a Chinatown donor to Clinton's presidential campaign to see if she was "coerced" into being a front for someone else's contribution.--SNIP--The LA Times reported on the April 9 fund-raiser, which netted about $380,000 - some from donors of meager means..... following stories about Clinton fund-raiser Norman Hsu, who has been charged with campaign-finance and other violations.

Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national briefly shook Clinton’s hand at a 2013 fund-raiser in her home;a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several totaling $2 million. The Clinton fundraiser was one of at least three interactions between Wang and McAuliffe. McAuliffe initially said he could not remember ever meeting Wang, though he later clarified that his staff had informed him of several likely meetings. Among the donations of DOJ interestwere a total of $120,000 in contributions to McAuliffe from a company controlled by Wang. DOJ told McAuliffe's attorney there were questions over foreign sources...

Mr Obama was briefed immediately on the suspected poisoning of the 41 year-old, which Chinese officials are linking to Mr Heywood’s powerful political allies, when American diplomats were told of the murder allegation. Gu Kailai, Mr Heywood’s former business partner and the wife of Bo Xilai, a senior politician who had been tipped for the highest political office, is suspected of ordering the Briton’s murder in a case at the centre of a political storm in China. The couple have disappeared from sight as the Communist Party attempts to regain stability....... Mr Obama was informed of suspicions over Mr Heywood’s...

Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe lied about meeting Wang Wenliang, the Chinese donor to his 2013 gubernatorial campaign whose contributions are now the subject of an FBI investigation. McAuliffe told CNN after the story broke that he thinks he has never met Mr. Wenliang.

A woman accused of stabbing three babies and two adults at a suspected birth tourism site said she mistook the newborns for wolves. Yu Fen Wang, 52, told the New York Daily News from Rikers Island she was sorry for the stabbing spree at the residence in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. Three babies — a 12-day-old, a 32-day-old and a 33-day-old — were taken to the hospital in critical condition after they were stabbed around 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 20. Wang was charged with five counts of attempted murder. “I don’t know why I did such a thing or...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

RALEIGH, NC (WTVD) -- A Raleigh family was terrorized by three masked and gloved gunmen who forced their way into an East Raleigh home, tied the family up, and robbed them. The victims are owners of three Chinese restaurants in Wake County. The home invasion robbery is the latest in a rash of robberies targeting Asian business owners in the Triangle. Jun Wang, 22, arrived at his home in Edgewater at Rogers Farm just before 11 p.m. Monday night to the surprise of his lifetime. He told ABC11, "My key was still in the door as I opened and they...

Full Title - FUSION: Hakluyt & Company — with offices in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney — was founded by an trio of former British intelligence operatives that connect to Hillary Clinton. Miss Trial via Thread Unroller

Three young warriors gave their all that many would live.

<p>KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia has apologised after a government ad in Chinese-language newspapers featuring a picture of a barking rooster to mark the Year of the Dog sparked a flood of mockery.</p> <p>The full-page advert by the domestic trade, cooperatives and consumerism ministry showed a rooster emitting the word "wang", used to represent a dog's bark in Mandarin.</p>

The State Department said today it can’t find any of Bryan Pagliano’s emails from the time he served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s senior information technology staffer during her tenure there. Pagliano would have been required to turn over any official communications from his work account before he left the government. State Department officials say he had an official email account, but that they can't find any of those records and continue to search for them. “The Department has searched for Mr. Pagliano’s email pst file and has not located one that covers the time period of Secretary Clinton’s...