In a move sure to provoke Beijing, a delegation from the European Parliament will travel to Taiwan next week, as lawmakers push for closer ties with Taipei.  
 
The small party plans to travel early next week, according to multiple sources familiar with the schedule, taking high-level meetings with senior Taiwanese government officials.  
 
Leading the delegation will be Raphael Glucksmann, a French MEP and outspoken critic of China who was sanctioned by Beijing in March in a dramatic tit-for-tat escalation in bilateral tensions.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said China’s test of a hypersonic weapons system is “very concerning” — and “very close” to a Sputnik moment as Beijing rapidly expands its military capabilities.

“Now, if you take a step back, what we’re in history-wise — we’re in one of the most significant changes in what I call the ‘character of war,’” Milley said. “We’re going to have to adjust our military going forward.”

The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone.
 
Gone, too, are the middle school uniforms in military camouflage and the armored personnel carriers rumbling around the homeland of the Uyghurs. Gone are many of the surveillance cameras that once glared down like birds from overhead poles, and the eerie eternal wail of sirens in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar.

Four years after Beijing launched a brutal crackdown that swept up to a million or more Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities into detention camps and prisons, its control of Xinjiang has entered a new era. Chinese authorities have scaled back many of the most draconian and visible aspects of the region’s high-tech police state. The panic that gripped the region a few years ago has subsided considerably, and a sense of normality is creeping back in

Statement on Misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 Origins
To date, the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic has not been identified, despite intensive efforts to do so. This is not unusual — confirming with 100% certainty the origin of a virus is a long and complicated process. It took 14 years for scientists to find a single bat population that contained all the necessary genetic components of SARS-CoV, the virus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic. We still do not know the origins of the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
 
Unfortunately, in the absence of a definitive answer, misinformation and disinformation are filling the void, which does more harm than good. NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.
 
The scientific evidence to date indicates that the virus is likely the result of viral evolution in nature, potentially jumping directly to humans or through an unidentified intermediary animal host. Historically, many viruses have emerged from animals to cause epidemics and pandemics, including influenza, Ebola, Zika, West Nile fever, SARS, and more. Importantly, after an intensive investigation, agencies in the U.S Intelligence Community agreed that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon and most agencies assessed that SARS-CoV-2 most likely was not genetically engineered.
 
Public health and scientific organizations, including NIH, are intensely interested in getting a definitive answer to inform efforts to prevent future events. This effort would benefit from less speculation and more scientific cooperation, especially from China, without which the SARS-CoV-2 origins will be impossible to identify.
 
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health

A prominent Chinese tech firm that sells hardware used ubiquitously throughout the world is under federal investigation after—according to reports—being tied to the facilitation of cyberattacks on various American and European targets.
 
On Tuesday, a swarm of FBI agents raided the Florida offices of Pax Technology, a large, Chinese-owned point-of-sale manufacturer that sells millions of payment terminals (POS) to companies all over the globe. POS terminals are essentially payment kiosks

China has passed a family education law that requires parents and guardians to reduce the “twin pressures” of homework and private tutoring on children.

Taiwanese minister’s covert trip to Brussels adds to EU-China tensions
Joseph Wu has also infuriated Beijing with his trip to the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Wu visited the Czech Republic and Slovakia at the beginning of the week and organizers of an anti-China protest in Rome expect him to travel to Italy on Friday to take part in a demonstration on the sidelines of a summit of leaders from the G20 group of leading economies. To add insult to injury in Beijing, this charm offensive from Taipei in Europe comes only days after U.S. President Joe Biden stressed his commitment to guaranteeing the security of the self-ruling island that China regards as its territory.

If the flying visit to Brussels were not incendiary enough in Beijing's eyes, the move that is likely to bring China to a boiling point is the expected detour to Rome to join protesters in the Italian capital. Organizers of the protest expect Wu to take part, but Taiwanese officials are not confirming that he will make such a provocative step.
 
If he went, that would create the very rare scenario of Wu being in the same city, at around the same time, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

China is also threatening to "react further" should European Parliament lawmakers press ahead with a plan to travel to Taiwan. Seven MEPs led by France's Raphaël Glucksmann — a member of the Socialists & Democrats group and vocal critic of Beijing's human rights record — are reportedly set to visit Taipei next week, according to the South China Morning Post.

"The European Parliament is an official body of the EU. If its committee sends MEPs to visit Taiwan, that would seriously violate the EU’s commitment to the One-China policy, damage China’s core interest and undermine the healthy development of China-EU relations. We will make further reactions in accordance with the development of the situation," the Chinese Mission to the EU said in a series of tweets.

Biden vows to stand with Southeast Asia in defending freedom of seas, democracy

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday the United States would stand with Southeast Asian allies in defending freedom of the seas, democracy and human rights and backed efforts to hold the Myanmar junta accountable to its commitments to peace.

Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed on Wednesday at a virtual regional summit to establish a "comprehensive strategic partnership", a sign of Canberra's ambition to play a bigger role in the region.
 
Biden joined Southeast Asian leaders in rebuking Myanmar's junta as the summit opened on Tuesday without a representative from the country following its top general's exclusion for ignoring peace proposals

Biden also said he would speak out for "human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet (and) the rights of the people of Hong Kong".