News of the World

[kyonides]

 Are you a Jehovah's Witness?

Stay away from Russia then

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55061919

Russian police have raided the Jehovah's Witnesses nationwide and made arrests in a new criminal case against the banned Christian-based group.
The Investigative Committee (SK) posted a video on YouTube showing SK men in balaclavas breaking into a flat and seizing piles of foreign currency.
The SK - which operates like the FBI - said "conspiratorial meetings" had been held at a Moscow flat since June 2019.
In 2017 Russia's Supreme Court banned the Jehovah's Witnesses as "extremist".

What makes this move curious is that religious freedom is protected by the Russian constitution. Meanwhile the Russian Orthodox Church isn't speaking against such a ban, actually they stated JW should not claim they're Christian at all.

Russia threatened to ram'US ship in Sea of Japan

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55066861

Russia says one of its warships caught and chased off a US Navy destroyer after it entered territorial waters in the Sea of Japan on Tuesday.
Moscow accused the USS John S McCain of travelling 2km (1.2 miles) across its maritime border in Peter The Great Gulf and says it threatened to ram the ship.
The US warship then left the area, according to Russia.
However, the US Navy denied any wrongdoing and said its ship had not been "expelled".
The incident took place on Tuesday in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, a body of water bordered by Japan, Russia and the Koreas.

USS John S McCain was not 'expelled' from any nation's territory.
The US would never bow in intimidation or be coerced into accepting illegitimate maritime claims, such as those made by the Russian Federation.

The same Russian ship in question was also involved in a near collision with some US cruiser back in 2019.

Justin Trudeau held no conversation with Greta Thunberg

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55062943

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has joined a growing list of public figures targeted by pranksters posing as climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Audio of Mr Trudeau speaking to an accomplice of pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov in January has been released by the pair.
The prime minister apparently fielded questions from the fake Ms Thunberg, on Nato, world peace and Donald Trump.
"This is not the first prank call of a world leader," his office said.
"The Prime Minister determined the call was fake and promptly ended it," Mr Trudeau's office said in a statement.
Taking the increasingly strange comments in stride, Mr Trudeau applauded the fake Ms Thunberg for her "perspective" and "passionate words".

I know there are people out there that pretend to be fun and make a living out of it but some of them take things way too far as to not to be punished somehow.

People demonstrate how difficult it is

to hide from CCTV cameras in Beijing

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55053978

On a busy Monday afternoon in late October, a line of people in reflective vests stood on Happiness Avenue, in downtown Beijing.
Moving slowly and carefully along the pavement, some crouched, others tilted their heads towards the ground, as curious onlookers snapped photos.
It was a performance staged by the artist Deng Yufeng, who was trying to demonstrate how difficult it was to dodge CCTV cameras in the Chinese capital.
By 2018, there were already about 200 million surveillance cameras in China.
And by 2021 this number is expected to reach 560 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, roughly one for every 2.4 citizens.

The demonstrators only had to walk 1.1km (0.7 miles) along Happiness Avenue but it took them over two hours to do it. There's no guarantee their efforts really allowed them to avoid being identified by authorities.
Help me say Big Brother!

Uighurs: China rebuffs Pope's criticism as groundless

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55067700

It came after the head of the Roman Catholic Church joined a growing group of international voices, describing the Uighurs as "persecuted" in a new book.
It is believed that the Chinese government has detained up to a million Uighurs in what the state defines as "re-education camps".
In his book Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future, Pope Francis writes that "I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi".

The Chinese government claims they always protected their people's rights. As if they ever cared about them...

US-China trade war: Trump gives one last twist

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55067595

The US will slap tariffs on Chinese twist ties, which are commonly used to seal bread bags and tie up cables.
The US said that China has been unfairly subsidising twist ties to the disadvantage of American producers.
This is the first time the US Commerce Department will impose tariffs to reduce the impact of China's currency.
The department said China's undervalued currency makes Chinese twist ties cheaper to US consumers, at the expense of its own producers.

Well, it's not the first time the CCP don't play by the book if talking about international trade.

Jihadist arrested in Lugano, Switzerland

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55066858

A woman has been arrested in the southern Swiss city of Lugano after allegedly injuring two other women in a suspected terror attack at a store.
She attempted to choke one and stabbed another in the neck with a knife before being stopped by shoppers, police say.
One victim is believed to have serious but not life-threatening injuries, while the other was lightly wounded.
The suspect, 28, was known to federal police from an investigation into "jihadist terrorism" back in 2017.

Europe definitely should take such terrorist attacks seriously to put an end to their plan of imposing sharia on people that has nothing to do with their beliefs or are no extremists and just wanna live their lives like any Westerner would.

Amazon + Black Friday + French Government

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-55062222
Even if France is reducing restrictions after the second wave of infections passed, the government disliked Amazon's version of the Black Friday. Amazon was forced to postpone it. The French Finance Minister claimed internet giants were the only ones taking advantage of the pandemic. Physical stores like an English bookstore in Paris are undergoing a serious crisis, as critical as to make it plea for help.