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American private schools owned by Chinese government-linked groups would not be allowed to operate junior military programs if a bill introduced Monday by Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) succeeds.

Concerns about energy shortages drive increase as projects progress at ‘extraordinary’ speed
China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015, research shows.
Over the year, 50GW of coal power capacity went into construction across the country – up by more than half compared with the previous year – driven by energy security considerations, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said on Monday.

The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus.

Virginia Democrats voted against teaching about the dangers of communism and the suffering of its victims after a teachers’ union said the curriculum would incite anti-Asian hate.

Zero-Covid spending and lower taxes has led to £4.2tn in local government debt, posing a ‘big headache’ for the economy
In China’s Sichuan province, Leshan city has plans to sell the operating rights to the Big Buddha, a 71-metre tall Tang dynasty stone statue, in one of a series of creative methods cash-strapped local governments are using raise money.
Having spent more than last year on Covid-prevention measures, and hit by falling tax revenues, by December 2022 local governments had accumulated 35tn yuan (£4.2tn) in debt, up from 30.5tn yuan the previous year. That means that China’s provincial debt burden is roughly 20% bigger than Germany’s total GDP. In 2022 Hegang, a city in the northern province of Heilongjiang, became the first city in China to undergo a fiscal restructuring.

Tech dealmaker reported to be unreachable 10 days ago in latest case of a top executive going missing during Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive
The Chinese billionaire tech banker Bao Fan, who was reported missing 10 days ago, is cooperating with Chinese authorities conducting an investigation, a China-based boutique bank has said.
It is the first time China Renaissance Holdings has given a reason for the disappearance of its founder and chairman, though no details about the investigation were shared.

A major war in the Indo-Pacific is probably more likely now than at any time since the Second World War. The most probable spark is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. President Xi Jinp ...

Also, how the war in Ukraine changed Europe and Iranian women are removing their hijabs.

Updated finding comes with ‘low confidence’ and is a departure from previous studies on how virus emerged, Wall Street Journal reports
The virus that drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the on Sunday.
The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of national intelligence director, Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It follows a finding reportedly issued with “moderate confidence” by the FBI that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.

Vladimir Putin accuses west of wanting to liquidate Russia; US president Biden says China negotiating peace deal ‘not rational’
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia. “In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.
The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass. The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.
Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a local GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it. A Guardian team on the scene assessed the rockets shells likely came from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.
US president Joe Biden has said the prospect of China negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia is “just not rational”. Speaking on ABC News about China’s peace plan, he said: “I’ve seen nothing [that] would indicate there’s something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia. The idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.”
China has not moved towards providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday. “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance, but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union programme.
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said it was up to Kyiv to decide when, and under what conditions, to enter talks with Moscow. He suggested the same was true for any decision on recapturing the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, will visit Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Lukashenko was due to visit between Tuesday and Thursday, but gave no details about his agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday, citing a foreign ministry statement. “This decision falls within the framework of preserving the interests of the Algerian state and the interests of the national community in this country,” state TV quoted the foreign ministry statement as saying.

A number of new incentives encouraging people to have children highlight the challenges China faces in trying to boost its declining birthrate.