China is testing a tiny bat-sized spy drone the country hopes will help it dominate a region of the atmosphere known as the ‘death zone’. Also known as ‘near space,’ the area begins roughly 20km (12 miles) above sea-level and is regarded as a death zone for drones as the thin air makes it hard for them to generate lift. Simultaneously, the extremely low temperatures of the zone means that... 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced plans to turn his country into the world’s strongest nation by 2050. David O’Brien of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China explained to Sputnik what could be behind Beijing’s push for global dominance. Sputnik: What is your outlook regarding China’s future development? How likely is it to become the biggest superpower? David O’Brien:... 

A Dallas, Texas, grand jury has returned two indictments against five Chinese citizens and four companies alleging fraud and other charges, the US Justice Department announced. The charges relate to the sales of stimulants intended for inclusion in dietary supplements which were deliberately mislabelled so as to hide their dangerous side effects and avoid health regulations. According to a statement... 

Saudi Arabia has become the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. The lucky machine is Sophia the Humanoid, who was designed to look like Audrey Hepburn. News of Sophia’s citizenship was announced at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. This comes shortly after Sophia’s UN speech which we written about yesterday. “I am very honored and proud for... 

Deaths caused by pollution topped 9 million in 2015, or three times the figure from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and almost 15 times as many as war and other forms of violence, scientists say. The alarm was sounded in Thursday’s report by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, an international group of over 40 authors writing on health and environment. One in six premature... 

China has developed a powerful new counter-terrorism laser gun, which can hit targets at 200 meters within one second. The weapon has a handset for aiming, a back pack containing the power supply, a remote control and laser emitter, the developer Hongfeng, a company affiliated with China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation (CASIC), told Chinese English-language newspaper The Global Times... 

A 21-year-old Chinese woman lost sight in one eye after playing a popular video game on her mobile phone nonstop for a whole day. The young woman was addicted to a video game called Honour of Kings. She was having a gaming marathon, having played it for hours, when suddenly she went blind in her right eye, South China Morning Post reported. At the hospital she was diagnosed with retinal artery occlusion. A... 

The Chinese authorities announced the closure of all North Korean companies on the territory of China against the backdrop of UN sanctions against Pyongyang due to continuing nuclear tests in the DPRK, a message posted on the official website of the Ministry of Commerce of China said. Officials with the Chinese department said that all legal entities from North Korea, including joint ventures with... 

Scientists around the world are watching the activity of Paektu volcano, which is located on the border of China and North Korea. On September 26, scientists of the Korean Geological Institute initiated an international scientific conference, in which leading seismologists took part. Paektu Mount is considered a shrine among the people of North Korea (DPRK). The volcano has started showing signs of... 

China may have poured billions into making its universities more globally competitive, but its idea of a quality education is guided more than ever by the Communist Party. In a drumbeat that has accelerated ahead of October’s twice-a-decade Party Congress, President Xi Jinping’s campaign to rein in civil society, online media and speech has extended to the classroom. Top universities seen as insufficiently... 

The US’ foreign policy may lead to a nuclear nightmare in Asia Pacific, compared to which the Fukushima disaster is a “firecracker,” an expert told Sputnik, adding that in his UN speech Donald Trump had repeatedly contradicted himself by calling upon nations to maintain their sovereignty while at the same time threatening to destroy North Korea. US President Donald Trump’s... 

Chinese scientists claim they have developed a working model of a microwave engine, which defies the laws of conventional physics, CCTV-2 reported. The TV channel provided no details of the EmDrive microwave engine, saying only that it would soon be tested in space. The EmDrive is built around a microwave-generating magnetron and a resonator, which accumulates the energy of their fluctuations. This... 

The arrest of a Chinaman living in Queens, New York, on charges of smuggling millions of dollars of counterfeit brand name goods into America, has revealed precisely how far Chinese manufacturers have infiltrated unsuspecting retail markets in the West with fake low-quality goods. According to a press release issued by the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District... 

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), the main contractor for the country’s space program, announced that it hoped to shatter Elon Musk’s Hyperloop dream with some terrifyingly fast competition. At the Commercial Aerospace Forum held in Wuhan Wednesday, CASIC claimed it had begun research and development on a new type of supersonic transport involving “near-ground flight,”... 

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown of California suggested the United States should emulate the Communist Chinese government, heaping praise on a country promoted by the elite as the savior of globalism following the election of President Trump. Brown, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China following President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, praised Xi as a “determined...