This case - of a former US military guy turned prison guard turned hired brawn for Chinese spies - is fascinatingly bizarre. Also among his targets was a sculpture of Xi Jinping as a coronavirus particle in the middle of the California desert, as I chronicle in my book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom.
Striking statement from China’s foreign press club, explicitly making clear its condemnation of China revoking visas, China detaining journos over coverage, not associated w/any media outlet. Media orgs - powerful ones - are not speaking up, and they should. fccchina.org/2026/04/20/f...
Funny, cool, so good at what he did
Remembering NPR audio engineer Brian Jarboe
www.npr.org/2026/04/13/n...
China’s ten points to improve relations with Taiwan suggests setting up more regular mechanisms for leaders to meet, edu exchanges, and also the broadcast of “healthy” Taiwanese TV, animations, to be broadcast in China: www.gwytb.gov.cn/topone/20260...
Never got to the bottom of it but the Starlink appeared to stop working after a few hours each time because it could not determine where it was - china or Philippines.
It didn’t work for me in the South China Sea ;)
Is that beige party building in front of the church new? I don't remember it from a few years ago.
Expensive, signal being jammed and most alarmingly, criminal to use - Iran’s arrested dozens of people they say they caught using or selling Starlink
China Book Review's shortlist for the 2025 Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Book on China.
chinabooksreview.com/2026/04/02/s...
What would you do to connect to the global internet? Some Iranians are traveling to another country in order to know what’s going on in their own country amid Iran’s internet blackout
Iranians are leaving the country just to get internet one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5753...
man, nobody doing it better than my pal @emilyzfeng.bsky.social. what a perfect NPR story this is ->
“The commonality among most Iranians NPR spoke with is that they feel they have lost opportunities — to make a living, to voice their opinions, simply to live — under the current government, which they say must go.” www.npr.org/2026/03/31/n...
""It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch," Moss said." www.npr.org/2026/03/31/n...
Gao Zhen’s closed-door trial began yesterday. He is being accused retroactively for sculptures he made, in some cases, decades ago www.npr.org/2026/03/30/n...
“…the supporters of the regime are very few in the country, but they have guns. And they have this mentality that tells them if they survive this war, they are victorious, and if they die, they are victorious. And she told me that makes them almost impossible to beat” www.npr.org/2026/03/29/n...
Not a cat person but these Van cats in Turkey are something else
Excited to share that the Mandarin-language version of my book is being published April 1 in Taiwan !
Gorgeous clear day earlier this week on the drive to Turkey’s border with Iran
Iran rejects a U.S. proposal to end the war and counters with a different peace plan. And, a jury finds Meta and Google negligent in a trial over social media's harms. n.pr/4bP9Leg
Read more about the families we talked to and the U.S. citizen children separated from their parents by immigration detention here: 8/
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Walking the streets of eastern Turkey here, I stumbled across an underground Iranian disco.
Inside, we met a Sufi dervish, a young protestor, a former prisoner...and spent Nowruz with them.
www.npr.org/2026/03/22/n...
The drive to the border... big skies, white mountains
