China Scraps Premier’s Annual News Conference in Surprise Move

China’s premier will no longer hold a news conference after the country’s annual legislative meeting, Beijing announced on Monday, ending a three-decades-long practice that had been an exceedingly rare opportunity for journalists to interact with top Chinese leaders. The decision, announced a day before the opening of this year’s legislative conclave, was to many observers a sign of the country’s increasing information opacity, even as the government has declared its commitment to transparency and fostering a friendly business environment. It also reinforced how China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has consolidated…

China Two Sessions: premier Li Qiang will not speak to press in break with tradition

China’s major annual political gathering has begun in Beijing, to discuss and approve the ruling Chinese Communist party’s policy direction for the year. But amid major economic headwinds, decreasing transparency on government indicators, and growing concern among international business and investors, on Monday it was revealed the country’s leading economics official, premier Li Qiang, would no longer meet with or speak to the press. The Two Sessions are so named for the near-simultaneous gathering of two political bodies: China’s rubber-stamping parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the political consultative…

Forensic spray using jellyfish protein could speed up fingerprint detection

Scientists have developed a forensic spray using a protein found in jellyfish that shows up fingerprints in just 10 seconds. They say that the dye spray could make forensic investigations quicker and more effective. It is also water-soluble and has low toxicity. Traditional forensic methods either use toxic powders that can harm DNA evidence or petrochemical solvents that are bad for the environment, the sale of which is increasingly restricted. The dyes in the spray are based on a fluorescent compound called green fluorescent protein (GFP), which has previously revolutionised…

Chinese tourism to Australia still in the doldrums after pandemic travel bans

In the two weeks either side of lunar new year, Mandy Ho, who manages a hot air balloon company in Melbourne, has many balls in the air. Most mornings before dawn, when weather permits, her colleagues fly Chinese tourists from the vineyards of the Yarra Valley over Melbourne’s eastern suburbs to parkland on the city’s fringe. Interpreters make sure nothing is lost in translation. Ho has spent weeks preparing tourists and arranging buses to collect them from hotels. She’s already met some of them while running the company’s Mandarin smartphone…

Asio cleared of unlawfully luring Daniel Duggan back to Australia, agency chief Mike Burgess says

The spy agency Asio says it has been cleared by the intelligence watchdog of allegations of impropriety raised by the Australian citizen Daniel Duggan as he fights extradition to the US. Duggan, a former US marines pilot accused of training Chinese pilots to land fighter jets on aircraft carriers, had complained to the inspector general of intelligence and security (IGIS) about Asio’s role in securing his return to Australia from China. His legal team had raised concerns an “unlawful lure” – in the form of an Asio clearance for an…

Intrigue swirls about possible reshuffles as China’s parliament convenes

Thousands of delegates are due to arrive in Beijing this weekend for China’s most high-profile political gathering, a closely observed series of meetings that will lay out the government’s policy blueprint for the year ahead. The event, known as the “two sessions”, begins on Monday as China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC) convenes alongside a separate but parallel meeting of the country’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The nearly 3,000 NPC delegates can amend the constitution, enact new legislation, approve the government budget and…

A Writer’s To-Do List: Learn History. Learn Chinese. Learn to Draw Comics.

When Tessa Hulls set out to write a book about three generations of women in her family, she had few illusions about how hard the task would be. The tale was geographically sprawling, and spanned a century: Her grandmother Sun Yi, a journalist in Shanghai, fled China for Hong Kong in 1957, then slowly went mad; her mother, Rose, attended an elite boarding school in Hong Kong founded in part for the mixed-race children of European expatriates, then moved to the United States in 1970. Much of her family’s story…

Murder and Magic Realism: A Rising Literary Star Mines China’s Rust Belt

For a long time during Shuang Xuetao’s early teenage years, he wondered what hidden disaster had befallen his family. His parents, proud workers at a tractor factory in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, stopped going to work, and the family moved into an empty factory storage room to save money on rent. But they rarely talked about what had happened, and Mr. Shuang worried that some special shame had struck his family alone. It was not until later that he learned about the mass layoffs that swept northeastern China…

Sweden is joining Nato, but it’s hopelessly unprepared for war | Martin Gelin

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 came as a rude awakening for Sweden. Across the country people suddenly realised that national security vulnerabilities were everywhere. The entire public transit rail network in Stockholm, for example, is operated by MTR, a Hong Kong-based company with ties to the Chinese Communist party. In the event of Stockholm being attacked by foreign forces, most of the detail about critical infrastructure and tunnels running under the city centre – home to the Swedish parliament, the prime minister’s residence, the state department, the…

Judge Fines Ex-Fox News Reporter, Catherine Herridge, for Not Revealing Sources

A federal judge held a veteran investigative reporter in contempt of court on Thursday for not revealing her sources for articles she wrote about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I. The journalist, Catherine Herridge, formerly of CBS News and Fox News, was ordered to pay $800 a day until she divulged the information. The judge, Christopher Cooper of U.S. District Court in Washington, stayed the fine for 30 days to give Ms. Herridge time to appeal. The case, which has alarmed First Amendment advocates, relates to a series…