HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s legislature unanimously voted on Thursday to overhaul district level elections by drastically reducing directly elected seats, a move critics said removed some of the last vestiges of democratic freedoms in the China-ruled city. Under the amendment bill, only 88 seats would be directly elected by the public, down from 452 seats in…

HONG KONG—Public screenings of a slasher film that features Winnie the Pooh were scrapped abruptly in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions over increasing censorship in the city. Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” on Thursday had been canceled with “great regret” in…

Commentary The Latin phrase pons asinorum literally means “bridge of asses” but for some 300 years has been deployed to mean the critical test of a formula or person, the decisive issue that reveals the essence of what we need to know. The pons asinorum of politics today concerns lockdowns, no more and no less….

Canada will impose sanctions on those involved in the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, including Iran’s so-called “morality police,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says. In a press conference on Sept. 26, Trudeau announced that his government will levy new sanctions on Iran following the death of 22-year-old Amini, and the state’s violent clampdown on…

Commentary Anyone who still insists the COVID pandemic isn’t serious is being deliberately mischievous, obtuse, or needs to check in on their issues. As of Dec. 23, the World Health Organization put global deaths from COVID-19 at 5.3 million people dating back to Dec. 30, 2019. To put that in a fathomable context, it’s equivalent…

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that the Coalition government does not support vaccination mandates used by the Australian state governments to incentivise the uptake of the COVID-19 inoculations. The statement came while he was touring the Tooheys brewery in Sydney on Thursday. He had been speaking about the anti-vaccine-mandate protests in Melbourne, stressing the…

A group of lawyers has issued a declaration calling for an end to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and passports, measures they say have “strategically” infringed on Canadians’ Charter-protected rights and freedoms. “In our country, civil liberties are under unprecedented attack,” reads a statement on the “Free North Declaration” website. “Governments, public health authorities, universities, public and…

A Victorian state MP has said that the rights and freedoms of Australians have been incrementally chipped away during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the unprecedented newly proposed pandemic laws potentially making Victorian leaders have “unfettered power” over the lives of the state’s residents. Neil Angus, the Liberal Party member for Forest Hill, says that 20…

A key question in the United States is how do we begin to define freedom, as government has gradually weathered the basic freedoms the country was founded on. To learn more about this, we sat down for a discussion with former libertarian presidential candidate, and current President of the Board at People for Liberty, Jo…

LOS ANGELES—Marking a major step in a return to normalcy, California health officials announced April 6 that all COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, gatherings and recreational activities will be lifted June 15, although a statewide mask mandate will remain in place. Assuming continued availability of vaccines and no spikes in COVID-19 hospitalizations—particularly among people who have…