U.S. Senator Marco Rubio will serve as acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday, after Senator Richard Burr announced he would step aside from the position during a federal investigation of his stock trades.
U.S. stocks sank Friday after figures showed retail sales in the country plunged by a record 16.4 percent last month, the worst decline in decades.
The United States has accused China of hacking American vaccine research amid a global coronavirus pandemic.
US President Donald Trump further hardened his rhetoric toward China on Thursday, saying he no longer wishes to speak with Xi Jinping and warning darkly he might cut ties over the rival superpower’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
More than a dozen Republican attorneys general called on Congress to conduct hearings about China’s “deceit” during the coronavirus outbreak.
New footage has emerged of an ongoing crackdown by China’s government against devoted Christians, including the removal of crosses and disbandment of churches.
Nations on Monday struggled to balance public and economic health amid mounting pressure to reopen economies despite an uptick in coronavirus cases ranging from China to even the White House.
China’s Communist Party and government are stepping up the use of Twitter to spread disinformation that Wuhan was not the origin of the coronavirus outbreak and that China is helping the world recover, the State Department said.
Video footage of a violent police raid on a church in the Fujian province of China was posted by Christian watchdog group ChinaAid this week. Broadcast by Fox News, the 11-second video shows members of the Xingguang Church blocking police officers who were forcibly entering the premises and a member being dragged out of the door.
On the morning of Jan. 3, an email was sent from the Indonesian Embassy in Australia to a member of the premier of Western Australia’s staff who worked on health and ecological issues. Attached was a Word document that aroused no immediate suspicions, since the intended recipient knew the supposed sender.
President Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have each said in recent days that there is significant evidence COVID-19 originated in a lab in China’s Wuhan province. At the same time, the Trump administration says it is looking into the cause of the coronavirus outbreak and has not published the evidence referred to. China has vehemently denied the allegations.
Christians in south-eastern China were recovering of serious injuries Tuesday after suffering attacks during a Sunday service amid a government crackdown on unregistered churches, rights activists told Worthy News. Church properties were also damaged in the May 3 violence against Xingguang Church in Xiamen city in China’s Fujian province, added advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
Iran has suggested it will abandon an already shaky deal to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons if an arms embargo on Tehran remains in place. The United States wants to extend the ban, which was due to end in October this year.
A majority of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 17 spy agencies believe the coronavirus likely originated with an accidental lab escape from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he has seen “enormous evidence” indicating the coronavirus pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
China has refused to cooperate with the World Health Organizations’ efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a WHO official told Sky News.
Tensions between China and the United States are rapidly escalating into a possible trade war with Beijing and Washington accusing each other of responsibility for the coronavirus outbreak.
The Philippines faces international pressure to end one of the world’s most repressive coronavirus lockdowns, with 120,000 people detained and some killed or abused for curfew violations in the past month. Witnesses, including Christian single mothers, have told Worthy News of intimidating police and military checkpoints.
The wife of a pastor imprisoned by Chinese authorities has said her husband was arrested for re-posting messages about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports. Zhang Xinghong said she was told by Chinese authorities that her husband Pastor Zhao Huaiguo has been charged with inciting subversion of state power because of these posts.
A U.S. government advisory panel wants India on a religious freedom blacklist over a “drastic” downturn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, triggering an angry reaction from New Delhi. In addition to India, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also recommends the inclusion of four more – Nigeria, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.