Comment on Sinosphere Blog: Wang Zhenmin on Hong Kong, Democracy and Protecting the Rich

The sails of Paris’ iconic Moulin Rouge windmill have collapsed overnight for the first time in the 134 year history of the cabaret club. The accident is believed to have occurred at 2 a.m. local time, less than an hour after the venue’s last show had ended, according to the club owners.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis has a confession to make. “Sometimes I watch the footage from my speeches and I always look much taller than everyone else around,” the 6-ft. 1-in. Greek Prime Minister says with a wry smile, buckled up in the back seat of his car in a pressed blue shirt and black hoodie.

It’s not just U. S. universities where the Israel-Hamas war is a touchy topic. This week, an American professor has sparked controversy in Malaysia after criticizing the Southeast Asian nation’s official pro-Palestinian stance on the conflict during a visiting lecture. “A country whose political leaders advocate a second Holocaust against the Jewish people will never be a serious player in world affairs, and will certainly never be a friend or partner of the United States,” Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, said during a keynote address at the University of Malaya on Tuesday, according to a now-deleted post on X in which he quoted himself.

“We are all at risk of manipulation online right now.” So begins a short animated video about a practice known as decontextualization and how it can be used to misinform people online. The video identifies signs to watch out for, including surprising or out of the ordinary content, seemingly unreliable sources, or video or audio that appear to have been manipulated or repurposed. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Though it may not look like it, this 50-second video is actually an election ad—one of three that Google will be rolling out across five European countries next month in advance of the European Union’s June parliamentary elections.

Venice, the historic Italian city known for its canals, would like to draw a balance between its residents who live there and help to keep the place running and its visitors, an important source of economic revenue but increasingly also a burden on social services and the livability of the city. In recent years, the balance has shifted: in the 1970s, Venice had some 175,000 residents; as of last year, its population dipped below 50,000—and the number of tourist beds outnumbered residents for the first time.

It could almost have been a vacation. U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday to be whisked to a basketball game and a dinner of steamed buns atop a balcony overlooking the city’s Ming Dynasty Yu Garden. America’s top diplomat even took time to post on Instagram from Shanghai’s neo-classical Bund, where he lauded the students and business leaders “building bridges and ties between our countries” as the neon lights of the Lujiazui business district twinkled in the background.