Yang Qiuyun's home in eastern China heaves under a mountain of paper files. They are scattered on top of cabinets, piled on the water dispenser and stacked up on her bed.

The files are filled with forms completed in her neat handwriting, records of the laborious work she carries out as one of 10 "information gatherers" in a village at the forefront of an experiment in social management: China's social credit system.

Every day, Yang, 52, roams Jiakuang Majia village with a pen and paper in hand, writing down every instance of free labour or other donations her fellow villagers make to the community - two points for Ma Shaojun for taking eight hours to install a new basketball hoop in the village playground; 30 points for Ma Hongyun for donating a 3,000-yuan (US$445) TV screen for the village meeting room; and 10 points each for Ma Shuting and Ma Qiuling who have a son serving in the army in Tibet.

Joe Biden, 76, has been getting heaps of attention for his verbal gaffes. Alas, voters should worry about a far bigger problem: It's impossible to know what he stands for.

Yes, some of his slip-ups can be head-scratching. Democrats choose "truth over facts," he said. Huh? The kids from the Parkland high school shooting — which happened after he left office — "came to see me when I was vice president."

He lamented "the tragic events in Houston" and "Michigan" rather than El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. He warned against giving President Trump "eight more years" and told backers to "go to Joe 30330," instead of texting him. And that's just recently.

Sometimes his flubs raise serious questions about what he thinks, as when he asserted that "poor kids" were as bright as "white kids," though he quickly corrected himself (as, to his credit, he usually does).

His advisers insist it's not his age but just "Joe being Joe." That's hardly consolation. Still, misspeaking isn't the worst of sins.

The bigger trouble is that, even when he's not mangling words, it can be hard to tell his true position — not just because he's inarticulate but because some of what he says is just plain bizarre. And because he's flip-flopped so furiously under pressure from his Democratic foes.

Vice President Mike Pence paid a visit to the Hudson Institute — a conservative Washington, DC, think tank — to give a wide-ranging speech about the United States' relationship with China. Standing stiffly in a shiny blue tie, he began by accusing the Chinese Communist Party of interfering in US politics and directing Chinese businesses to steal American intellectual property by "any means necessary." Pence then turned his attention to the country's human rights abuses, starting not with the persecution of religious minorities, but with a peculiar governmental initiative: the social credit project. Pence said:

"By 2020, China's rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life — the so-called 'social credit score. In the words of that program's official blueprint, it will 'allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.'"

The vice president's remarks echoed a steady stream of Western media reports, published in dozens of outlets over the past few years, that paint China's Social Credit System as a dystopian nightmare straight out of Black Mirror. The articles and broadcast segments often said China's central government is using a futuristic algorithm to compile people's social media connections, buying histories, location data, and more into a single score dictating their rights and freedoms. The government can supposedly analyze footage from hundreds of millions of facial-recognition-equipped surveillance cameras in real time, and then dock you points for misbehavior like jaywalking or playing too many video games.

The international reaction -- and especially the US' -- to the West Papua riot might influence Pacific geopolitics by potentially pushing Indonesia to choose a side in the New Cold War.

The eastern Indonesian region of West Papua was rocked by a riot in its capital city of Manokwari on Monday that resulted in the torching of the local parliament and was sparked by reports that the authorities used disproportionate force over the weekend when responding to claims that students from that part of the country who are studying in East Java supposedly disrespected the national flag on Independence Day. The police are accused of using tear gas to clear out a dormitory full of students and then temporarily detaining 43 of them after humiliatingly forcing them to "squat and waddle across the ground" first, according to Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman as quoted by The Guardian. She also said that racist chants and death threats were shouted against the students at that time too, which naturally inflamed the restive residents of West Papua who have long complained of continuous human rights abuses against them ever since their controversial incorporation into Indonesia following a UN-backed vote by a little more than 1,000 locals hand-picked by Jakarta to participate (they unanimously agreed to it).

The mineral- and LNG-rich but sparsely populated jungled territory remains woefully underdeveloped to this day despite having the world's largest and second-largest gold and copper mines, respectively, thus feeding into a simmering separatist movement that carried out two high-profile attacks last summer in the run-up to local elections there. The author analyzed the significance of this event at that time in his piece about how "The Papua Attacks Prove That Insurgency Is Still Alive In Indonesia", which builds upon earlier analyses about Indonesia's Hybrid War vulnerabilities and its future role in the emerging Multipolar World Order. Judging by what just took place on Monday, anti-government sentiment is extremely high in the region and capable of spilling over into violence if the indigenous society there feels like their people are being collectively humiliated in front of the eyes of the entire country after the nationwide scandal that erupted over the weekend following the flag incident. About that, the Indonesia Expat online information outlet quoted police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo as saying that the entire thing was based on a hoax and that the authorities are searching for the person who spread the initial reports on social media that ultimately led to the riot.

Billionaire investor George Soros on Thursday said Chinese President Xi Jinping was "the most dangerous enemy" of free societies for presiding over a hi-tech surveillance regime.

"China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced.

"This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of open societies," Soros told a dinner audience on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Communist China under Xi has been building a cutting-edge system including facial recognition to keep tabs on its citizens, and Soros said it would be used to calculate how dangerous a threat individuals might pose to the regime.

Five years is a long time in politics. In 2014, relations between Russia and the West went into a nosedive over Ukraine and Syria.

The "annexation" of Crimea, the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine destroyed the partial re-establishment of normal relations which had started in 2008 with President Obama's "re-set" and Nicolas Sarkozy's rapprochement with Vladimir Putin. This included the Georgian crisis of that year, of which the French president's decision in 2010 to sell two Mistral aircraft carriers to Russia was a potent symbol. The collapse in relations as a result of the Ukraine crisis led to EU and US sanctions against Russia, and to her expulsion from the G8 group of nations, as it then was, as well as to a war of words between East and West.

Vladimir Putin's visit on Monday to the fort at Bregancon, the official summer residence of the French president, demonstrates that that period is now officially closed. On every level, the West has now abandoned its earlier hostility to Putin and Russia. First, the symbolism: President Putin spends a lot of time governing from his own summer residence in Sochi, and the invitation to the Mediterranean coast, where the atmosphere is more intimate and relaxed than in Paris, was undoubtedly a gesture to Putin's predilection for warmer climes. The fact that the meeting took place just a few days before the Biarritz summit of what is now the G7 also shows that Paris intends to include Moscow in discussing world affairs at the highest level, even if it is unlikely that Russia will be formally readmitted to that structure. Even the substance of the meeting showed how much things have changed. When Emmanuel Macron said that Russia was essential to solving various crises in the world - Iran, Ukraine, Syria, the INF Treaty - he was announcing a 180-degree change in French and Western policy.

Attorney General William Barr removed the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons from his position Monday, more than a week after millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein took his own life while in federal custody.

Hugh Hurwitz's reassignment comes amid mounting evidence that guards at the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York abdicated their responsibility to keep the 66-year-old Epstein from killing himself while he awaited trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls. The FBI and the Justice Department's inspector general are investigating his death.

Barr named Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the prison agency's director from 1992 until 2003, to replace Hurwitz.

Hurwitz is moving to a role as an assistant director in charge of the bureau's reentry programs, where he will work with Barr on putting in place the First Step Act, a criminal justice overhaul.

Following US National Security Adviser John Bolton's talks with Boris Johnson and his ministers in London last week, FCO [Foreign Commonwealth Office] officials have been asked to speed up contingency planning for the UK to move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with an eye to an "early announcement" post Brexit.

The UK is currently bound by an EU common foreign policy position not to follow the United States in moving its Embassy to Jerusalem. As things stand, that prohibition will fall on 1 November. FCO officials had previously been asked to produce a contingency plan, but this involved the construction of a £14 million new Embassy and a four year timescale. They have now been asked to go back and look at a quick fix involving moving the Ambassador and immediate staff to Jerusalem and renaming the Consulate already there as the Embassy. This could be speedily announced, and then implemented in about a year.

Johnson heads the most radically pro-Israel cabinet in UK history and the symbolic gesture of rejection of Palestinian rights is naturally appealing to his major ministers Patel, Javid and Raab. They also see three other political benefits. Firstly, they anticipate that Labour opposition to the move can be used to yet again raise accusations of "anti-semitism" against Jeremy Corbyn. Secondly, it provides good "red meat" to Brexiteer support in marking a clear and, they believe, popular break from EU foreign policy, at no economic cost. Thirdly, it seals the special link between the Trump and Johnson administrations and sets the UK apart from other NATO allies.

The death of millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein behind bars should trigger "system-wide self-reflection" on how prisoners are treated, Epstein's lawyer tells RT - and it will trigger conspiracy theories for years to come.

'Institutionally ill-equipped American gulag'

Metropolitan Correctional Center "is sort of like an American gulag for people who have not been convicted of anything," Epstein lawyer Marc Fernich tells RT. Insisting the wealthy pedophile was not a "security risk," Fernich laments that the prosecution painted him as an "exceptional flight risk and danger" - equipped as he was with at least one phony passport, a private jet, and a considerable fortune - and left him to languish in "uncivilized conditions" which took their toll on his mind and body.

MCC is "institutionally ill-equipped" to deal with someone like Epstein who wouldn't last long in general population but who isn't a hardened criminal, Fernich explains. "This is one of the toughest pre-trial detention facilities in the country. And the conditions are inhumane." Epstein, he insists, was "presumed innocent," despite his 2008 conviction for soliciting underage prostitutes - part of a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal the fallout from which culminated in this year's sex trafficking charges - and should not have been confined in such "barbaric" conditions.

Jihadist rebels have withdrawn from a pocket of land near Idlib in northern Syria following an assault by President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The Idlib region is the last part of Syria to be holding out against the Damascus government.

China has warned of "terrorist organisations" including remnants of Daesh rising again in Syria if the international community ignores the "early warning" signs.

Xie Xiaoyan, Beijing's envoy in Syria, said: "There is now a danger of terrorist organisations like ISIS (Daesh) being revived. The international community should pay attention."

He was meeting in Geneva with the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen.