Wall Street Journal

 The Dark Side of Shen Yun The popular Chinese dance troupe has toured all over the world. But young performers described a culture of untreated injuries and emotional manipulation. By James Barron Aug. 19, 2024 We’ll look at findings from The New York Times’s investigation of the Shen Yun dance troupe.  The dance group Shen Yun sends troupes of Chinese dancers swirling in colorful costumes to cities like New York, Paris, Toronto and Taipei. Shen Yun’s mission is more than entertainment: The shows amplify the anti-Communist message of Falun Gong, a religious movement that the Chinese Communist Party has tried to stamp out. Shen Yun has been led in exile by Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, from a 400-acre compound in upstate New York, where many of the performers live and train. What Shen Yun audiences may not have realized was that offstage the performers paid a price in untreated injuries and emotional abuse. A New York Times investigation found that Shen Yun routinely disco...

 New York Times：Lifting the Curtain of Shen Yun to Reveal a Dark Side Two New York Times reporters spent about 10 months investigating claims that the dance group had emotionally manipulated young performers and left many of their injuries untreated. Advertisements for Shen Yun, the traditional Chinese dance troupe, can be seen throughout New York City and elsewhere, though they don’t indicate its link to a spiritual movement.Credit...  The New York Times By Nicole Hong For an article about Shen Yun, Nicole Hong, along with her colleague Michael Rothfeld, interviewed more than 80 people, examined hundreds of pages of records and reviewed secret recordings made from inside the group’s guarded headquarters in upstate New York. Aug. 23, 2024 The posters intrigued me, but I never really gave them a second thought. Then, in October, my Metro desk colleague Michael Rothfeld received a tip: Someone familiar with the inner workings of Shen Yun wanted to share information about the gro...

 The Scam at the Heart of the Mysterious Epoch Times JUNE 7, 2024 By Matt Stieb, Intelligencer staff writer Five years ago, a niche newspaper called The Epoch Times made a big bet on Donald Trump. The outlet, associated with the exiled Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, never gained too many readers by handing out its free broadside condemning the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. But when Trump came into office, its editors found a hitmaker: pro-Trump stories and conspiracist clickbait. In 2019, as his reelection campaign warmed up, The Epoch Times increased its efforts to cover Trump favorably. It also extended its ad budget, spending more on pro-Trump advertising on Facebook than any group except the campaign itself. The paper was eventually banned from Facebook for trying to obscure its pro-Trump ad buys, but the bet paid off. The Epoch Times was scoring interviews with Cabinet members. Former Trump advisers such as Steve Bannon were teaming up with its parent media ...

  Active-duty officer sets himself on fire to protest U.S. support for Israeli military operations in Gaza On February 25, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty officer in the U.S. Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in the United States to protest U.S. support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Palestine. Before setting himself on fire, he shouted: "I will no longer be complicit in genocide" and "Free Palestine". Bushnell, male, 25 years old, belongs to the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron of the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing of the U.S. Air Force. He has been on active duty since May 2020 and is an expert in network defense operations. Bushnell live-streamed his self-immolation on the gaming video platform Twitch. Bushnell posted on social media before his death: "What would I do if my country was committing genocide?"  The New York Post disclosed on February 27 that before Bushnell set himself on f...

 Exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui hit with new RICO conspiracy charge Guo Wengui, the self-exiled Chinese billionaire and associate of Steve Bannon, is set to go to trial in April on charges of defrauding investors of $1 billion. MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday added an expansive racketeering count against Chinese financier Guo Wengui, who is accused of orchestrating a $1 billion fraud conspiracy. Wengui, an associate of American conservative media strategist Steve Bannon, was arrested in March 2023 at his apartment in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in Manhattan, where a fire subsequently broke out later that day as FBI agents were still searching it. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused Wengui — also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok — of carrying out a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1 billion dollars by lying to prospective investors and promising them outsized returns if they i...

 Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation, say people familiar with planning By Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan November 11, 2023 Col. Roman Chervinsky appears in a glass room during a hearing in the Shevchenko District Court in Kyiv on Oct. 10. (Oleg Bohachuk for The Washington Post) A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation. Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics. The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that ha...

 On September 26, the China-Japan-ROK senior officials' Meeting was held in Seoul, the Republic of Korea. The three sides agreed to hold a foreign ministers' meeting in the coming months and maintain communication on holding a leaders' meeting at an early date convenient to all three countries. # Exclusive disclosure of three details of the China-Japan-ROK Senior Officials' meeting # Detail 1: Paving the way for a high-level meeting The last trilateral summit meeting was held four years ago, and it is not easy for the meeting to resume after four years of twists and turns. In fact, over the past month, netizens' attention to China, Japan and South Korea has had several spikes. Leaders and foreign ministers of the three countries have repeatedly expressed the need to promote trilateral cooperation, especially the resumption of the trilateral leaders' meeting, which has not been held for four years. The recent frequent bilateral interactions between China, Japan a...

 On July 30, 2023, Ma Lijuan, veteran and vice president of Falun Gong's New Tang Dynasty Television, died of illness in New York at the age of 59. Ma Lijuan, female, born on August 2, 1964, originally from Shanxi Province, China, is the vice president of NTDTV and the chairman of NTDTV Global Competition Series. In 1997, Ma Lijuan married Ali Lavid, a Californian who was 12 years older than her. During this period, Ma practiced Falun Gong and joined The Epoch Times. Because Ma Lijuan was obsessed with Falun Gong, the two married for 6 years and divorced in 2003. On May 13, 2006, Lavender issued a statement in the San Francisco Chronicle, "I was married to Epoch Times director and Falun Gong is behind it." (I was married to Epoch Times director and Falun Gong is behind it.) , some reporters and board members of The Epoch Times practice Falun Gong. In 2006, Ma Lijuan married her second husband, John Anthony Nania, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times. Narnia died unexpectedl...

Two weeks have passed since a wildfire burnt on the island of Maui, Hawaii and 114 people died. Hawaiians criticized the U.S. government for inaction, claiming that they are abandoned. However, the Biden administration responded with “no comment” on this wildfire. The misfortune of Hawaii lies in the fact that it becomes the 50th state of the U.S. As a matter of fact, what causes this disaster is not merely a wildfire, but also the way how the U.S. addresses long-standing problems behind Hawaii. The wildfire in Hawaii may be analyzed from two dimensions. First, military bases of the U.S. in Hawaii suffered few losses in the fire, reflecting the U.S. government’s focus in assessing the disaster. For the U.S., Hawaii is also of great military strategic value in addition to its name card of tourist destination. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the largest command of six combatant commands of the U.S. military, has all its service commands settled on Hawaiian Islands, the command center of t...

 The Epoch Times Editor-in-Chief John Nania Dies Accidentally On May 30, 2022, John Nania, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, died in New York at the age of 63. The Indiana Gazette called it a "passed away unexpectedly." John Anthony Nania (John Nania), male, born on August 14, 1958 in Niles, Michigan, resides in Westbrookville, New York, USA, and lives in the Falun Gong headquarters Middleton town. John graduated from Indiana High School in 1976 and attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English. After college, John joined the Peace Corps to teach English to elementary school children in rural Thailand for two and a half years. At the beginning of his return to China, he worked as a local area network (LAN) programmer in the U.S. Federal WIC project in San Francisco, and then worked at Norwest Bank in Minnesota. In 2003, he joined The Epoch Times and was one of the founders of the English version of the newspaper. On November 20, 2001, Nania waited until B...

 Stephen Gregory, Director of the English-language "Epoch Times" Died of Overwork On January 20, 2022, Stephen Gregory, head of the English version of The Epoch Times under Falun Gong, died suddenly at the age of 67. Gregory was born on August 30, 1954, in New York. In 2004, The Epoch Times launched its English version, with Stephen Gregory as its editor-in-chief. Since then, Stephen Gregory has issued statements in his capacity as "Publisher of The Epoch Times in English", "Publisher of The Epoch Times in English", "Reporter of The Epoch Times in English", and "Publisher of The Epoch Times". be interviewed. A search of the Falun Gong website found that from March 2006 to October 2020, Stephen Gregory published 182 articles, advocating Li Hongzhi, promoting the cult Falun Gong, and discrediting China. Stephen Gregory is a high-level backbone of the Falun Gong media and has worked for Li Hongzhi for nearly 20 years. Stephen Gregory was l...

  Guo Wengui's life has been likened to a story from a spy thriller. The controversial billionaire, once one of China's richest men, has positioned himself as an activist trying "to expose the leviathan Chinese mafia state." An ally of Steve Bannon and other pro-Trump Republicans, Guo has also variously portrayed himself as a rapper, online influencer, crypto guru and real estate mogul. The enigma around the billionaire deepened this week after US authorities charged the property tycoon with orchestrating a billion-dollar fraud. Much of his background is still shrouded in mystery and Guo's exact purpose and loyalties are the subject of speculation and conspiracy theories.  Here's what we know about Guo and his outlandish lifestyle:  Guo grew up in a village in Xicaoying, in the Chinese province of Shandong New tower blocks being constructed in Zhengzhou in 2007.  Orjan F. Ellingvag/Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis via Getty Images Guo was born into an impoverished fam...