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Glenn Yothers, 56, of Unity, took $150,606 from the accounts of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Latrobe, about 30 miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh, according to court documents obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Yothers, who had served as church treasurer for 12 years, made the transfers to his personal account between February 2015 and December 2019, state police confirmed. He spent most of the money on a website called Flirt For Free....

The child, named Messiah, was at a hospital for surgery after he broke his arm by jumping off the bed with his little brother. His adorable attitude towards his hospital treatment has delighted millions of social media users who have watched him smile his way through getting an X-ray to waking up post-surgery. But the video that has really caught the attention of TikTok users is one of Messiah fighting against sleep after being sedated....

Eisenhower isn’t the only GOP scion debating if the party still feels like home. Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment banker in New York and an environmental activist like his great-grandfather, Teddy, takes issue with what he says is George W. Bush’s inattention to global warming (and Republican presidential contender John McCain’s flirtations with the religious right). He’s unhappy with the cost of the global war on terror and the record deficits incurred to finance it....

Over the years, Mao’s legacy has remained largely intact. At school, Chinese children are still taught to believe that he was one of history’s great thinkers. But public discussion of sensitive historical topics–like the famine that killed at least 20 million people after Mao ordered the collectivization of farms in 1958–has been banned. This didn’t stop a group of academics, writers and dissidents from recently posting a letter on the Internet blaming Mao for a “rule of terror” and suggesting that his body be shipped to his hometown in Hunan province....

China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has been upping the pressure for the island to accept Chinese sovereignty, moves that have been condemned by the U.S. and the U.K. HMS Richmond, a Type 23 ASW frigate deployed with the Carrier Strike Group, posted about the move on its official Twitter account. “After a busy period working with partners and allies in the East China Sea, we are now en route through the Taiwan Strait to visit #Vietnam and the Vietnam People’s Navy,” the tweet said, with an accompanying photo....

The patient from Washington state had recently returned from Wuhan, a central city in Hubei Province, where an outbreak of viral pneumonia started late last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on Tuesday. Lab tests on samples from the patient who entered the U.S. on January 15 came back on Monday, confirming he had the new coronavirus—a member of a large family of viruses encompassing common colds, as well as more serious illnesses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)....

The population data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on May 11 showed the country now has 1.41 billion people, an increase of 0.53 percent from 10 years earlier. Some of the figures making for more concerning reading for Chinese authorities included the 12 million children born in 2020—down from 14.6 million in 2019—as well the gender gap, which grew by a million since the 2010 census. The official numbers show China has 723....

In social media footage viewed more than 7 million times on China’s Twitter-like microblog Weibo, heavily armed police and additional officers in hazmat gear are seen escorting four men through the city of Jingxi in Guangxi, a region bordering Vietnam. A series of clips showed the suspects carrying enlarged printouts of their own mugshots as their faces were obscured by protective equipment during the public shaming event. Similar spectacles technically have been barred for a decade due to the humiliation they cause to would-be offenders....

Efforts had been boosted by a partnership formed in May between Chinese firm CanSino Biologics and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). The company was expected to ship samples of a candidate vaccine to Canada for clinical trials. However, the shipments never arrived after the Chinese government refused to approve their export, possibly over increasing political tension between the countries. “Due to the delay in the shipment of the vaccine doses to Canada it is evident this specific opportunity is over and the NRC is focusing its team and facilities on other partners and COVID-19 priorities,” the NRC said in a Thursday statement announced the partnership had ended....

The footage aired by China’s state broadcaster CCTV last week included rare images of the Type 96A main battle tank in action during the war game in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province in east China. People’s Liberation Army units of the 72nd Group Army, based in Huzhou, Zhejiang, took part in the street battle exercise, which attempted to simulate urban conditions China’s invading forces might encounter following a successful landing on Taiwan....

Taiwan’s defense ministry has been recording the Chinese military’s near-daily warplane sorties into the island’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ) since last September. It reported two People’s Liberation Army Y-8 reconnaissance planes in the defensive airspace on Monday, without revealing further details about aircraft model, speed or altitude. However, military enthusiasts monitoring the aeronautical emergency frequency 121.5 MHz intercepted a radio warning issued by the Republic of China Air Force at 9:47 a....

That was the assessment Taiwan provided on Tuesday in publishing its 2021 National Defense Report, a biennial government document that has been tracking the shifting power balance across the Taiwan Strait for the last three decades. In a report that echoed many of the observations and concerns raised in Japan’s own defense white paper in July, Taiwan described the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as having ambitions that reach far beyond the so-called first island chain, the frontline of the American alliance system and its maritime deterrent....

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - China’s Chen Aisen and Lin Yue as expected won gold in the men’s 10 metre synchronized diving at the Rio Games on Monday, keeping alive the country’s goal of a clean sweep in all eight events. Teams from the United States and Britain won the silver and bronze medals. With near perfect execution and synchronization scores over six dives, the world champions won by a wide margin....

“It was like a four-poster bed today,” Hamilton, who started last and put in a feisty drive to battle his way up to seventh, told reporters. “The car was pretty damaged. I don’t know really what…I’m sure it was some aero components. But I think the suspension was damaged as well so the car was flexing like crazy.” Hamilton, who went into the weekend aiming to kick-start his title defence with a third successive win in Shanghai, was forced to start from the back of the grid after failing to set a time in Saturday’s qualifying session due problems with his Mercedes engine....

Global Times—a nationalist paper owned by The People’s Daily newspaper which is the Chinese Communist Party’s official publication—claimed Sunday that Australia is “waging an intensifying espionage offensive against China.” The newspaper accused Australia of “sending agents to China to spy, gather intelligence and recruit assets, instigating defection among Chinese nationals, spying on Chinese students and organizations in Australia, feeding fake news to media to hype up the ‘China espionage theory’ and even in early years attempting to install wiretaps in the Chinese Embassy in Canberra....

Wu Peng, the director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Africa Department, told reporters that “some countries that have said they have to wait for their own people to finish the vaccination before they could supply the vaccines to foreign countries.” This was an apparent reference to the accusations that the United States is hoarding vaccines. “We believe that it is, of course, necessary to ensure that the Chinese people get vaccinated as soon as possible, but for other countries in need, we also try our best to provide vaccine help,” Wu said....

President Donald Trump and Pompeo have both expressed confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is the origin point for the novel coronavirus that has spread worldwide, infecting more than 3.5 million people and killing more than 251,000, per Johns Hopkins University. The Global Times newspaper—owned by the People’s Daily, the official publication of the Chinese Communist Party—published an editorial Tuesday branding Pompeo a “liar” and suggesting his conduct does not fit with his Christian faith....

In a critical editorial, the Global Times said the U.S. should pay a price for its mistake and called for the incident to be investigated by the International Criminal Court. “It was a serious act of state terrorism and constituted a war crime. Since the U.S. has almost never seriously held its soldiers accountable for the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and the Middle East, we strongly call on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to investigate this matter,” the Global Times wrote....

The Islamic State militant group ISIS-K—which is opposed to the U.S. and the Taliban—claimed responsibility for the Thursday attacks. The blasts left more than 90 people dead, including 13 American servicemembers. The explosions, reportedly carried out by suicide bombers, came as the U.S. rapidly evacuates tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan refugees following the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country this month. The Global Times, a daily tabloid published by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, published a Friday opinion article written by its editorial staff titled, “Biden wants to save face, but Kabul airport attacks prove his incompetence....

The China Daily wrote that “the reunification of the two sides across the Taiwan Straits is more than the reunification of the mainland and the island.” “It is about Taiwan residents identifying with the Chinese nation and Chinese culture,” the piece said. “Based on over 20 years of governing experience in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions after their return to the motherland, the complete national reunification requires social and cultural integration of the two sides of the Straits....