torsdag 4. desember 2025

China blasts UK for delaying decision again on massive London embassy

China on Wednesday blasted the U.K. government’s latest delay in deciding whether to approve the construction of a huge Chinese Embassy in London. British authorities said Tuesday that a planned decision by Dec. 10 would be pushed back to Jan. 20, following mounting security concerns.

“The U.K.’s repeated delay in granting approval is completely unjustified and the reasons they cited are untenable,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, when asked about the development.

The government is “strongly dissatisfied,” he added.

The plans for the embassy close to London’s financial district and sensitive data cables have been stalled for years. The proposed structure at Royal Mint Court, near the Tower of London, would be the largest embassy in Europe, covering 20,000 square meters (about 215,000 square feet).

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Doodling, drowsiness and a conspicuous misspelling highlight Trump’s last Cabinet meeting of 2025

With Tuesday’s White House Cabinet meeting chugging past the two-hour mark, President Donald Trump ‘s eyes fluttered and closed. His budget director busied himself doodling a fluffy cloud. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was lucky enough to speak early, but the title on his nameplate was misspelled.

The sleepy, and occasionally slipshod, gathering nonetheless ended with a flurry of news. Trump declared that he didn’t want Somalis in the U.S. and Hegseth cited the “ fog of war ” in defending a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat in the Caribbean Sea in September.

The president started things off by noting that it was the last time his Cabinet would gather until 2026. And, though marathon sessions with his top advisers lavishing praise have become a Trump trademark since he returned to the White House, this latest installment felt at times like a holiday break was needed.

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China’s Xi and France’s Macron pledge cooperation on global crises and trade

China and France pledged deeper cooperation on global issues like the war in Ukraine and trade, as France prepares to take on the presidency of the Group of Seven next year. French President Emmanuel Macron met with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday morning as part of a three-day state visit focusing on trade and diplomacy.

The French leader is seeking to involve Beijing in pressuring Russia toward a ceasefire with Ukraine after a recent burst of diplomacy around a U.S.-led peace plan.

“We are facing the risk of the disintegration of the international order that brought peace to the world for decades, and in this context, the dialogue between China and France is even more essential than ever,” Macron said Thursday.  “I hope that China will join our call, our efforts to achieve, as soon as possible, at the very least a ceasefire in the form of a moratorium on strikes targeting critical infrastructure,” he said.

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Americans Are More Bullish Than Ever About US Military Power

A majority of Americans want the United States to be a leading actor in global affairs and are in favor of supporting Ukraine and defending Taiwan, according to a new public opinion poll. The annual Reagan National Defense Survey, released on Thursday by the Reagan Institute, polled 2,507 U.S. adults from October 23 to November 3.

The survey found strong support among Americans for active U.S. engagementin the world, backed by longstanding alliances like NATO, seemingly at variance with the "America First" philosophy of President Donald Trump's administration.

Americans in general were confidence about the U.S. military's qualitative edge over America's top adversaries—55 percent said the U.S. had "superiority" in overall military strength against rising superpower China. A plurality of respondents—44 percent—said the U.S. should maintain a military "large enough to win separate wars against China and Russia at the same time."


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A trade deal with Washington and a warm welcome for Putin: Can India have it both ways?

When Vladimir Putin’s plane touches down in New Delhi on Thursday, he will be met with the pomp anceremony reserved for one of India’s most steadfast partners. Yet his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is simultaneously attempting to maintain a deep strategic relationship with a key global rival: the United States.

This is India’s diplomatic split screen. On one side: the potential purchase ofadvanced Russian fighter jets, cheap oil, and an ironclad friendship forged in the Cold War. On the other: American collaboration on technology, trade and investment – and the hope President Donald Trump will lift his punishing tariffs.

In the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, India has leveraged its strategic assets – a massive market and a pivotal location in the Indo-Pacific – to command attention from both the White House and the Kremlin.

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The party’s AI: How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights

This report shows how the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming China’s state control system into a precision instrument for managing its population and targeting groups at home and abroad.

China’s extensive AI‑powered visual surveillance systems are already well documented. This report reveals new ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using large language models (LLMs) and other AI systems to automate censorship, enhance surveillance and pre‑emptively suppress dissent.

Drawing on LLM testing, detailed case studies and analyses of procurement documents, corporate filings and job postings, this data‑rich report traces how AI censorship mechanisms distort information and how predictive policing and biometric surveillance reinforce algorithmic repression. ASPI’s research shows that the CCP has created market‑based mechanisms to encourage private innovation in AI‑enabled censorship technology, making it easier and cheaper for companies to comply with censorship mandates.

This report also reveals how AI‑powered technology is widening the power differential between China’s state‑supported companies operating abroad and foreign populations—further enabling some Chinese companies to systematically violate the economic rights of vulnerable groups outside China, despite Beijing’s claims that China respects the development rights and sovereignty of other countries.

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China’s censorship and surveillance were already intense. AI is turbocharging those systems

China’s ruling Communist Party is using artificial intelligence to turbocharge the surveillance and control of its 1.4 billion citizens, with the technology reaching further into daily life, predicting public demonstrations and monitoring the moods of prison inmates, according to a new report.

Many of these systems are already well-documented – from the country’s army of online censors maintaining its Great Firewall, to the surveillance cameras ubiquitous on almost every street and block across urban China.

But the report released Monday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) details how the government’s AI tools, used to “automate censorship, enhance surveillance and pre‑emptively suppress dissent,” have grown more sophisticated in the past two years – against the backdrop of a deepening US-China tech rivalry.

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Myanmar makes more meth than anywhere else. Opium production there also just hit a decade high, report says

Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar surged to its highest level in a decade this year as the nation engaged in a civil war remains one of the world’s primary suppliers of illicit drugs, according to a United Nations survey. The growth solidifies Myanmar’s position as the world’s main known source of illicit opium, especially following sharp declines in production in Afghanistan after the ruling Taliban imposed a ban following their 2021 takeover.

The Myanmar Opium Survey 2025, issued Wednesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, found the area where opium is cultivated expanded by 17% from 2024 to 53,100 hectares (131,212 acres), the largest area since 2015.

UNODC also has described Myanmar as the largest methamphetamine producer in the world. Meth is easier to make on an industrial scale than labor-intensive opium and is distributed as tablets and crystal meth by land, sea and air around Asia and the Pacific.

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