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https://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-macron-loses-absolute-majority-as-lawmakers-defect-11589882166?mod=world_major_1_pos5

PARIS—A group of lawmakers broke away from French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist political party on Tuesday, depriving the leader of an absolute majority in the National Assembly at a critical juncture in his efforts to steer France out of the coronavirus crisis.

The defections leave Mr. Macron’s party, Republic On the Move, with 288 of the 577 seats in France’s National Assembly, down from 308 when he was elected. To pass legislation, Mr. Macron will now have to rely more heavily on his political alliance with Modem, a smaller centrist party that has moved in lockstep with the president in the past.

The lawmakers announced the move in a videoconference Tuesday, saying they planned to caucus in the National Assembly as a new group called “Ecology democracy solidarity.” The group, which totals 17 members, also includes lawmakers that defected from Mr. Macron earlier in his term.

“We are at a historical tipping point, and the decisions that will be taken in the next weeks, months will shape the future of France, of our planet” said Paula Forteza, co-president of the new political group, adding that the government should focus on social justice and the protection of the environment rather than short-term economic policies.

A spokeswoman for Republic on the Move declined to comment. Earlier this month, Republic on the Move’s parliamentary whip Gilles Le Gendre wrote to party lawmakers over the encrypted messaging app Telegram, saying that any defections would represent a breach of trust with Mr. Macron and voters.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-nears-settlement-with-sudan-over-1998-terror-bombings-11589922441

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is nearing a deal with Sudan to resolve claims over al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, helping clear the way to remove Khartoum’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The plan is part of U.S. efforts to support the civilian-led transitional government in Sudan, whose armed forces last year ousted President Omar al-Bashir, a military dictator who seized power in 1989. Earlier this year, Sudan settled terrorism-related claims from the 2000 al Qaeda suicide bombing of the USS Cole during its call at Aden, Yemen, which the Bashir regime allegedly had assisted.

“Following extensive negotiations, we believe that we have reached a common understanding with Sudan on the contours of a future bilateral claims agreement” over the embassy bombings, a State Department official said Tuesday. Victims would receive more than $300 million altogether, a congressional aide said.

The 1998 attacks in Kenya and Tanzania killed hundreds and injured thousands, and various groups of victims are represented by different legal teams. Twelve Americans were killed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16042/china-cyber-war

Beijing’s cyber offensive against the Free World is only part of what appears China’s effort to achieve global leadership in critical future technologies such as artificial intelligence, renewable energy systems, robotics, rare earth element exploitation, biotechnologies, as well as medical and agricultural advances.

These attacks will likely continue, as past attempts by U.S. administrations to reach cessation agreements with Beijing seem to have been futile. China clearly views cyber attacks as a weapon of warfare with little risk of eliciting an aggressive U.S. response. In fact, PLA leaders in China’s Guangzhou Military Region have publicly called for Chinese operators to continue the “People’s War,” win the cyber war, and prepare for attacks on satellites in space.

China’s Cyber War on America has been ceaseless, comprehensive and longstanding. In the past 15 years, China has hacked official government departments, defense contractors, utility companies, and U.S. and allied intelligence agencies. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, it appears, integrated China’s cyber attack capabilities into its apparent overall plan to surpass the U.S. as the world’s leading power.

As part of its efforts, the CCP has for years built up a sophisticated infrastructure within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to steal critical technical data from U.S. public and private targets. The PLA units in the Second and Third Departments of the General Staff are the principal engineers of China’s vast assault to collect U.S. intellectual property.[1] Another unit, probably in the PLA’s General Staff’s Fourth Department, concentrates its electronic warfare systems to seed malware into U.S. computer networks.[2]

Beijing’s cyber offensive against the Free World, however, is only part of what appears China’s effort to achieve global leadership in critical future technologies such as artificial intelligence, renewable energy systems, robotics, rare earth element exploitation, biotechnologies, as well as medical and agricultural advances. The Chinese government also exploits bilateral commerce with the U.S. and investment by U.S. companies in the Chinese economy to steal trade secrets.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16041/black-day-palestinian-journalism

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) has denounced the order as a “black day in the history of Palestinian journalism and a massacre against freedom of expression.”

The number of Palestinian journalists targeted by the Palestinian Authority may have dropped, but it is obvious that most of these reporters practice self-censorship and take extreme care to avoid angering their leaders.

That is most likely why most Palestinian journalists living in PA-controlled areas rarely, if ever, report on issues that reflect negatively on Palestinian leaders. The only freedom of expression they are allowed to practice is one that includes heaping praise on Palestinian leaders while bashing Israel on a daily basis.

Those journalists probably see themselves as foot soldiers in the Palestinian national struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with yet another extremist Muslim state.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is ignoring calls to lift a ban on dozens of news websites and social media channels that were blocked more than six months ago, raising concern among Palestinian journalists that their leaders are still working to muzzle critical voices.

The PA’s refusal to comply with the appeals coincided with World Press Freedom Day, a worldwide event marked on May 3 to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

While journalists around the world were celebrating World Press Freedom Day, their Palestinians colleagues were still fighting against restrictions imposed on them by the PA and its leaders. Nearly three decades after the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA, the Palestinians still do not have a free and independent media.

On October 17, 2019, the Palestinian Magistrate Court in Ramallah ordered local internet providers to block access to 59 news websites in accordance with a request from the Palestinian attorney general’s office. The order was issued under the Palestinian Cybercrime Law, which allows authorities to direct internet service providers to block websites that allegedly threaten national security, civil peace, public order, or public morals.

According to Palestinian sources, the court order targets websites, blogs and Facebook pages that oppose the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, as well as several senior Palestinian officials.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16006/india-china-coronavirus

In true Orwellian fashion, top Chinese diplomats are still demanding that foreign governments rewrite the history of the coronavirus outbreak.

While India had shown restraint, Communist China has shown little. The Chinese air force has continued its incursions into Taiwanese air space. China has also tightened its grip on artificial islands it created in the South China Sea by setting up fictitious local governments on them. These weaponized islands… trample on the sovereignty of many of its maritime neighbors, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan.

The United States and rest of the Western world would do well to see the pandemic as a wake-up call and decouple their crucial and strategic sectors from dependence on China in any way. As US General Jack Keane has repeatedly warned the US, China a not a friend; “it is a predator economically, geopolitically and militarily.”

The world is looking to India and its Asian Pacific allies, in a strong alliance with the West, to take a stand and face China’s increasing military, geopolitical and economic intimidation.

As coronavirus leaves behind a trail of human suffering and economic devastation, nations across the world have begun asking critical questions about the global pandemic. Countries are enquiring into Communist China’s handling of the pandemic, which first appeared late last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

As early as January 14, China had used the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency, to spread disinformation about the human-to-human transmissibility of Covid-19, a remark that led US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien later to call the WHO a “tool of Chinese propaganda.”

While U.S. President Donald J. Trump faced mostly undeserved, politicized criticism for questioning China’s culpability in the spread of the worldwide pandemic and his calls for an international probe into it, more and more capitals across the Western world are making similar demands.

On March 20, The Washington Post attacked President Trump for even mentioning China in context of the pandemic. “Trump has no qualms about calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus.’ That’s a dangerous attitude, experts say.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/katie-hopkins-video-britain-boris-and-lethal-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

Hosted by Anni Cyrus, producer of The Glazov Gang and Founder of Live Up To Freedom.

This new webinar features U.K.’s valiant freedom fighter Katie Hopkins, who focuses on Britain, Boris and Lethal Socialized Healthcare, unveiling the disturbing reality of Life under lockdown in the U.K.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16031/germany-sovereignty-eu

The seemingly obscure ruling… has called into question the legitimacy of the EU’s supranational legal and political order…. The German court’s ruling marks a new phase in the debate over the balance between national and supranational sovereignty.

The European Union is now engaged in a power struggle with its largest member state, Germany. The legal feud threatens to unravel not only Europe’s single currency, the euro, but the EU itself.

“What amazes me is the one-sidedness and the zealous tone that is struck by some here. It is clear that the European Court of Justice has been claiming an unlimited precedence for European law for 50 years, but almost all national constitutional and supreme courts have objected to this for just as long. As long as we don’t live in a European superstate, a country’s membership is governed by its constitutional law.” — Judge Peter Michael Huber, a member of the German Constitutional Court who helped write the ruling.

“One thing should never be forgotten: Europe is not a federal state, but a legal community developed from the founding core of an economic community in clearly limited areas of national sovereignty. Any sovereignty of the European Union is only derived from the sovereignty of the constituent member states.” — Klaus-Peter Willsch, a member of the German parliament.

Germany’s Constitutional Court has issued an unprecedented ruling that directly challenges the authority of both the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice.

The seemingly obscure ruling, which seeks to reassert national sovereignty over bond purchases by the European Central Bank, has called into question the legitimacy of the EU’s supranational legal and political order.

The European Union is now engaged in a power struggle with its largest member state, Germany. The legal feud threatens to unravel not only Europe’s single currency, the euro, but the EU itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16014/ramadan-coronavirus

Ramadan in war-torn Afghanistan is especially hard on the poor who suffer from malnutrition. Lockdown means no work: “If we can’t work, we can’t buy food and we will be fasting for 24 hours.”

It is this year’s Ramadan. More than 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide are currently refraining each day from water and food from sunrise to sunset. The day of fasting is usually concluded by “Iftar”, a communal breaking of the fasting by eating three dates, followed by a meal. The main focus of the daily Ramadan festivities is on the community, the gathering of family and friends. In recent years, Muslim societies in non-Muslim countries have extended their frequently grand Iftar-festivities to include politicians and other stakeholders. For instance, in 2019, the Islamic Faith Community of Austria organized an interfaith Iftar which included a speech by the mayor of Vienna.

This year’s Ramadan is impacted by the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. As Islam does not have a central authority akin to the Pope in the Catholic faith, there are no central rules for the celebration of Ramadan in 2020. Each community, each Muslim denomination, provides its own interpretation of what faithful are generally to do during the annual month of fasting.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in order to curb the spread of the virus, has banned the country’s annual “exodus” called “mudik” which commonly occurs at the end of Ramadan, when people return to their villages across the island country. While mosques in Indonesia’s deeply conservative autonomous province of Aceh are packed despite the Covid-19 pandemic, due to a ruling by clerics claiming that Aceh has not been affected by the virus, in other parts of the country, most people are banned from leaving their cities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/chinas_happy_harmony_hell.html

David Alan Brat is the dean of the Liberty University School of Business. He served as the U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district from 2014 to 2019. He defeated smug Eric Cantor in the GOP primary and won the general election…..

Dear World: Are you happy yet? This is not a story about coronavirus; it’s worse. It is a story about War, Unrestricted War. The Chinese have promised the world Happiness and Harmony, but have instead lost the “Mandate of Heaven” and delivered Hell. A few courageous experts have been right all along and this is a letter of thanks to them — and a note to the Americans who may want to follow. After you see the scale of deception unleashed upon our country and after your emotions calm, please take economic action! China is at war. Are we?

General Robert Spalding, in his book, “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept” gives it away in the title. But the stories of deception will send chills up your spine. Up front, the damage from the war is real. “Simply put, 3.4 million US jobs vanished between 2001 and 2017 due to our trade relationship with China….with 75% of the jobs lost in manufacturing.” All of this occurred under the false assumption that this is just “normal free market competition.” How do you adhere to free markets when your competition is communist and does not respect the price system, private property, or the rule of law? Economic elites have no answer. Everyone should know by now that “China welcomes investment, but it won’t let investors take their profits out of the country (China). Chinese companies set up shop all around the world, but the totalitarian CCP (Chinese Communist Party) puts all kinds of limits on foreign companies (USA) growing in China.” Is this the free market system the elites have in mind? Adam Smith knew better.

How has the language and economic logic been so tortured and twisted in China’s favor?