chinese, food, news

Banned: China Goes Hard on Foreign Soft Cheese

China has banned the import of foreign soft cheese, angering foreign trade officials who say it is unjustified. The nationwide ban — which came into place earlier this month — stops foreigners providing soft cheeses, such as Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola, and Stilton, to China’s relatively small but growing soft cheese market. Chinese officials say foreign ...

James Burke

Hurricane Harvey: Acts of Heroism, Acts of Kindness

They say everything is big in Texas. This must include big hearts as well. Examples of heroism and kindness were seen aplenty as Texans came together in the southeast of the Lone Star state to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey, the worst rainfall disaster in U.S. history. The death toll of the disaster has ...

James Burke

Texas National Guardsmen.

Sentencing of Young Democracy Activists Is ‘Political Payback’

A decision by a Hong Kong appeals court to jail three young democracy activists has been met with a barrage of criticism from around the world. The court’s re-sentencing of Alex Chow, 26, Joshua Wong, 20, and Nathan Law, 24, on August 17 to 6-8 months for unlawful assembly has been widely condemned, especially considering they ...

James Burke

HK activist Joshua Wong.

Why the U.S. Needs to Deal With China’s Theft of Intellectual Property

Free trade with China is failing the U.S. because of the Chinese government’s unfair trade practices, says an American professor of economics. Brian Brenberg, an associate professor of economics at The King’s College in New York, said the idea of free trade with China is threatened by Beijing’s theft of intellectual property (IP). “China is one ...

James Burke

Chinese Navy Spies on US-Australia War Games

The presence of a Chinese Navy spy ship monitoring large U.S.-Australia war games on the Queensland coast has been described as provocative by senior Australian military officials. The Chinese Navy ship — an Auxiliary General Intelligence vessel (AGI) of the Type 815 Dongdiao-class — eavesdropped from international waters on this month’s Talisman Sabre war games ...

James Burke

New York Times Journalist Walter Duranty Covered Up Genocide

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times, Walter Duranty, covered up one of the worst genocides in modern history. The atrocity I’m referring to is the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 that was orchestrated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. It killed an estimated 7 to 10 million people. Walter Duranty is now viewed as ...

James Burke

Tiananmen Square Massacre: The Great Unknown for China’s Youth

June 4 is the 28th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre where untold numbers of pro-democracy activists were killed by soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. Yet awareness of what occurred in 1989 is unknown to many of China’s youth, says Wei Jingsheng, a veteran activist best known for his involvement in China’s democracy movement. ...

Rory Karsten

Scientists Develop a Wolverine-Inspired Self-Healing Material

Scientists have now developed a transparent, self-healing, highly stretchable conductive material they say was inspired by Wolverine. The self-healing material can be electrically activated to power artificial muscles and could also be used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots. The researcher’s findings have been published in the journal Advanced Material. It is the first ...

Nspirement Staff

Trump to Create a ‘Gigantic’ Military to Scare Off Beijing

The potential flashpoints in the South China Sea and the East China Sea didn’t get much of a mention during the race for the U.S. presidency, largely because they aren’t core issues for domestic America. If there was any China-related talk during the campaign, the now President-elect Donald Trump mostly spoke about trade issues with the ...

James Burke