SHANGHAI - China's powerhouse moves on like a speed-breaking EV. The atmosphere is electric. At a business dinner in a landmark Cantonese restaurant, Trump's visit to China at least propels the conversation towards something more tangible: the conflicting paths for future generations from the West down to the East.

Business Shanghai is not exactly impressed by the arrival of the Emperor of Barbaria. Even if every possible geopolitical variable may be at stake in what is arguably the most important diplomatic meeting of the Year of War 2026, with possible trade and security decisions bound to affect the whole Global South.

Let's start with pedestrian American concerns. A master in the Art of No Empathy, Trump at least may have vociferated the whole game away: "I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody."

And yet he does. He's terrified of becoming a fat lame duck after the mid-terms. So he will pressure Beijing to buy more soybeans - to appease his Midwest base - and more Boeings. He will pressure Beijing to export rare earths - to appease the industrial-military complex.

And of course he will exercise maximum pressure on Xi to press Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz, so oil prices will come down, inflation will be reduced, and the Fed will cut rates.

He holds zero cards to achieve this agenda. On the tech war, his maximum pressure only led to China spectacularly bypassing U.S. suppliers, over and over again. On the trade war, China amply diversified exports and even got a record trade surplus.

Iran of course is the key - not least by showing for all the planet to see the glaring structural mega-holes of the "indispensable nation". What will Trump do? Threaten Xi because Iran is using the Chinese BeiDou satellite system, which de facto reduced the whole of West Asia to a glass house for Iranian ballistic missiles?

Iran never lost its oil connectivity corridor to China when the Emperor of Barbaria came up with the "blockade". The flow is on, via the shadow tanker network navigating close to Iranian and Pakistani territorial waters, ship-to-ship transfers, disguised cargoes, and now Chinese refiners told by Beijing to absorb the sanctions risk.

That's not a fight in effect only in thalossacratic terms, but also in Eurasia overland terms - via the Eurasian rail corridor, those trains running from Xian to Tehran and vice-versa. Railways may still not match the volume of maritime exports, but strategically that's absolutely key, driving the point that maritime pressure is completely different from overland economic strangulation.

The "brilliant" American idea of suffocating China's oil supply chain - from Venezuela to Hormuz - plus sanctioning Chinese teapot refineries only led to China emerging as one of the key real mediators during the (non-stop broken) ceasefire, alongside Russia.

The whole Hormuz game, played to perfection by Iran, has had very little impact on Chinese imports, as much as restricting exports of Nvidia H100 and H200 to "control" Chinese AI had next to zero impact. After all, China de facto ignores Nvidia. The DeepSeek V4 model uses local chips. And the H200 is not sold in China.

Xi won't even need to tell Trump face to face that if he insists on deploying financial war by shutting down the financial institutions behind the teaport refineries, Beijing will have no trouble into deploying full-scale economic war.

Taiwan is not the only remaining card. Taiwan is not even a card. Taiwan is an internal security matter for Beijing. Everything else is just spin. Beijing may invest in persuading Trump about nullifying the $11 billion weapons sale to Taiwan, including Aegis-equipped destroyers, F-35s, (inefficient) Patriot missiles and E-2D Hawkeye aircraft for early warning signs. But even that is peripheral.

So what's left after all the (reduced) pomp and circumstance? At best the current, quite precarious status quo.

It's very real: the Epstein class is dead serious about 'getting rid of the poor people,' and creating an Orwellian totalitarian society.

Last week, a British farmer reported that he received a letter from the government, informing him that,

"... by 2030, there is to be a 50% reduction in farmed animals. And by 2050, 100% - zero farm animals systems in place. And guess who's signed up to that? Yes, the two biggest arseholes in the world: Starmer and Bill Gates. What more proof do I want, and I've got it in writing. So it looks like their little takeover is coming along nicely for them, but unfortunately we've now got the document. So... let World War 4 commence. We don't need to be at war with Russia, we're going to create our internal one."

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is investigating more than 120 biological laboratories abroad that were funded by US taxpayer dollars for decades, as part of an effort to end potentially risky experiments with viruses pursuant to President Trump's executive order on so-called "gain-of-function" research.

Gabbard told The Post Monday in a statement that her team is going "to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what 'research' is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world."

"The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have," the spy chief also said.

"Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration's national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth."

In a significant development announced today by the U.S. Department of Justice, Arcadia, California Mayor Eileen Wang has been charged with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government - the People's Republic of China (PRC). Wang, 58, has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. She resigned from her position as mayor and Arcadia City Council member this afternoon following the unsealing of the case.

According to court filings and the DOJ's Central District of California announcement, Wang and her former fiancé, Yaoning "Mike" Sun, operated the U.S. News Center, a website that presented itself as a news source for the local Chinese-American community. From late 2020 through 2022, they received and executed directives from PRC government officials - primarily via WeChat - to post pro-PRC propaganda. Examples include publishing pre-written articles denying forced labor or genocide in Xinjiang, editing content at the direction of Chinese officials, and sharing view counts and links in coordinated group chats. PRC officials reportedly praised the speed and effectiveness of the posts, with messages such as "So fast, thank you everyone" and "Great!"

A Russian cargo ship likely carrying two nuclear reactors for submarines, possibly destined for North Korea, suffered a series of explosions and sank in unexplained circumstances, about 60 miles off the coast of Spain, a CNN investigation has found.

The extraordinary fate of the Ursa Major has been shrouded in secrecy since it sank on December 23, 2024. But it may mark a rare and high-stakes intervention by a Western military to prevent Russia from sending an upgrade in nuclear technology to a key ally, North Korea, CNN reporting suggests. The ship set sail just two months after Kim Jong Un had sent troops to assist with Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

A flurry of recent military activity around its remains has deepened the mystery around its cargo and destination. US nuclear "sniffer" aircraft have flown over the sunken ship twice in the past year, according to public flight data. And its wreckage was also visited a week after it sank by a suspected Russian spy ship which set off four further explosions, according to a source familiar with the Spanish investigation into the incident.

Keir Starmer has told his cabinet he will fight on as prime minister, saying the threshold for a leadership challenge has not been met, as ministers began to rally around the embattled leader.

The Guardian understands Starmer did not give cabinet critics time to respond, before moving the conversation on to the Middle East, and none called directly on him to resign during Tuesday's meeting.

Sources said the prime minister did not have any one-on-one meetings before or after cabinet, apart from with his close ally Richard Hermer, despite several ministers previously suggesting he should consider his position.

In comments that in effect dared the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to launch a challenge against him, Starmer told ministers that he intended to get on with governing. One source said Streeting had tried to speak to the prime minister privately after - but been rebuffed.

The illegal armed groups that recently tried to stage a military coup in Mali receive Western funding, the Africa Corps' Mi-8 helicopter commander with the callsign Vertikal told the Zvezda TV channel.

When asked if the West was funding the militants, he said: "It definitely is."

According to him, the militants have good weapons and communication devices, and their commanders are effective enough. "It's not about fragmented tribes running around attacking each other; it's about a coordinated policy aimed at changing the government in Mali," he added.

The officer stressed that the Africa Corps' goal was to preserve stability and security in the country.

The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier that illegal armed groups had attempted to stage a military coup in Mali on April 25. Africa Corps units foiled the coup attempt and prevented mass civilian casualties. The militants lost over 2,500 fighters and 102 motor vehicles. The militants were trained by Ukrainian and European mercenary instructors.

The buzz of the Israeli drone was constant that day, and every time Ahmad Turmus looked up, it seemed to be circling over him, like an all-too-patient bird of prey.

So when the phone rang as he was visiting family one Monday afternoon in February, Turmus wasn't too surprised that the person speaking accented Arabic was an Israeli military officer.

What surprised him was the question.

"Ahmad, you want to die with those around you or alone?"

Turmus, according to family members interviewed, answered with one word before hanging up: "Alone."

The targeting of Turmus, which Israel acknowledged, demonstrates how, time and again, its military has mastered an intelligence war for which Hezbollah appears to have no answer.

Ever since the spectacular pager attacks of September 2024 — when Israel remotely detonated explosives hidden in pagers carried by Hezbollah members — foot soldiers, support personnel, field commanders, chiefs of staff and even a revered secretary general have been felled by a targeting system powered by artificial intelligence.

The Israeli army chief of staff repeated his warnings that the military needs to urgently address a growing shortage of troops.

The Israeli military is preparing for an expansion of its ground campaign in south Lebanon, Hebrew media reported on 11 May, coinciding with concerns over a shortage of troops within Tel Aviv's ranks.

According to Israel's Channel 12, the preparations come within the context of what Tel Aviv is calling Hezbollah's "ceasefire violations." The report said:

"We are preparing for the possibility that the political echelon will give the green light to expand the operation in Lebanon, and we are making the necessary preparations on the ground accordingly."

From the outside, we fail to perceive the metamorphosis of the United States: In four months, it has changed its political ideology (it is no longer "Jacksonian"), its military doctrine (it no longer applies the "Rumsfeld-Cebrowski" strategy), and its faith (it no longer believes in the plurality of religions). We are publishing a study on this transformation, which compels us to completely revise our perception of this country.

In January 9, 2026, Pope Leo XIV presented his New Year's greetings to foreign ambassadors. He declared, among other things:

"These days, the weakness of multilateralism on the international stage is particularly worrying. A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all is being replaced by a diplomacy of force, by individuals or groups of allies. War has returned to fashion, and a warlike fervor is spreading. The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited countries from using force to violate the borders of others, has been broken. [ 1 ] Peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself, 'in the pursuit of an order willed by God, which implies a more perfect justice among men,' [ 2 ] but is sought by arms, as a condition for asserting one's own domination. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence." [ 3 ]

This speech greatly displeased the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. He was a Christian Zionist and a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the sect of Pastor Douglas Wilson. Since September 30, 2025, he had been reforming the Pentagon, dismissing officers who had been appointed in accordance with woke ideology and the principles of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI). [ 4 ]