… Beijing’s latest Defence White Paper reads more as a report card on the status of PLA reforms than a strategic policy document. This White Paper identifies the United States as the single most precarious threat to China’s national security and strikes an increasingly assertive tone towards Taiwan…
On August 15, India’s 72nd independence day, a massive crowd of people, many waving Pakistani or Kashmiri flags, gathered outside the Indian High Commission in London to protest against the Indian government’s measures to prevent protests in Kashmir.
This plan to reduce force levels in Afghanistan seems to be a maintenance of the status quo.
On the night of August 17, as over 1,000 guests danced at a wedding celebration in Dubai City, a hall in Kabul named after the Afghan elite’s favorite weekend getaway, a 23-year-old interloper detonated his suicide vest by the bandstand. The blast killed 80 people and wounded nearly 200 more, mostly from the Hazara ethnic group, followers of the Shiite sect of Islam predominant in that neighborhood of western Kabul. The groom and bride, who are both Shiite, miraculously survived. “I will never see happiness in my life again,” the groom, a tailor named Mirwais Elmi, told Afghanistan’s TOLOnews.
Unlike the 2008 global financial crisis, which was mostly a large negative aggregate demand shock, the next recession is likely to be caused by permanent negative supply shocks from the Sino-American trade and technology war. And trying to undo the damage through never-ending monetary and fiscal stimulus will not be an option.
It’s hard to know exactly what happened on August 8, when an accident offshore of the Nenoksa Missile Test Site in northern Russia caused an explosion. But we do know that it left five Russian nuclear scientists dead and caused a spike in radiation levels in the surrounding area. The available evidence has led some US intelligence officials, arms control experts, and President Trump to conclude that the Russians were testing an engine for a nuclear-powered cruise missile (though there are skeptics).
BERLIN — If there’s one factor that could be described as the key to Angela Merkel’s longevity as German chancellor, it’s the economy.
The U.S. could “drown the world in oil” over the next decade, which, according to Global Witness, would “spell disaster” for the world’s attempts to address climate change. 
In a provocative new book, three scholars from the libertarian Cato Institute—John Glaser, Christopher A. Preble and A. Trevor Thrall—counsel the United States to abandon the pursuit of global primacy for a policy of prudence and restraint. “Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Do Better)” is a scalding indictment not only of the 45th U.S. president, but also of a morally bankrupt national security establishment whose addiction to empire has embroiled the nation in misbegotten military misadventures. American foreign policy professionals may cast the United States as a benevolent hegemon, defending the liberal or “rules-based” international order. But this self-serving argument is hard to take seriously, they write, given the hubris, hypocrisy and coerciveness of the American imperium.
Earlier this year, the video-sharing website YouTube updated its systems “to begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways”—for example, videos claiming the Earth is flat. More recently, YouTube, which is one of the two most widely used online platforms in the United States, announced in a blog post that it would remove “content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.” It’s all part of YouTube’s efforts to eliminate hate speech and “denialism.”
Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 & 2 cooling towers and containment buildings.
Seventy-five years ago, Charles de Gaulle, leader of France’s provisional government, returned to Paris. For four years, he had lived in exile in London. Now he made his way through an exuberant crowd at the Hôtel de Ville, the site at which France’s earlier revolutions and republics were consecrated, greeting the leaders of the nation’s resistance movements. De Gaulle had not planned or rehearsed the speech he gave on this occasion, but it was perhaps his greatest. “Do not let us hide this deep and sacred emotion,” he said. “There are moments that go beyond each of our poor little lives. Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and the help of the whole of France, of France that is fighting, of France alone.”
By all accounts, Donald Trump is not pursuing anything resembling a strategic initiative by antagonizing Denmark. “Greenland was just an idea, just a thought,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, addressing his reported interest in purchasing the artic territory from Denmark. Copenhagen’s reluctance to part with its territory was the ostensible reason why the president rejected an invitation from Danish Queen Margrethe II to visit America’s NATO ally as part of a visit to Europe. Thus, what Trump concedes as being nothing more than an errant thought has inaugurated a minor international incident./arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JCVKRSTGXNHBBAJ2D76SCQ7JJY.JPG)
U.S. Cyber Command teams will likely use Army-provided platforms to help deliver cyber consequences on the battlefield, a service official said Aug. 23.
As the United States and China escalate the past year’s trade dispute into full-scale economic war, the decisive fact in the conflict has gone entirely unmentioned: China has already won the critical engagement in the conflict.
THE BATTERY IS the most important component in your smartphone, because if the battery isn't working, nothing else can. With the right sort of care and attention, you can make sure your battery stays charged for longer—and lasts longer overall, as well.