On Monday night I landed in Hong Kong for a trip. I'm a nostalgic person so even as I visit new places, I also gain a great deal of value and sentiment out of visiting places that I feel emotionally attached to and of significance in my life. It will soon be 9 years since I lived in Hong Kong as an exchange student at HKU. The city has changed tremendously in some aspects since that time, especially if you only go by the mainstream media.

Joe Biden has quit the race for the US Presidential election. Finally succumbing to widespread concerns about his age and mental capacity, the President has announced he will step aside for the Democratic nomination and finish his term gracefully. Biden, at 82 years old, is already the oldest president in history and his reputation did not recover from his car crash of a performance at the Presidential debate.

On the first day of the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, Donald Trump, fresh off the wheels from an attempt on his life, appointed Ohio Senator J.D Vance as his running mate to be Vice President. Vance, soon turning 40, is seen as an interesting choice because he was once upon a time a "Never Trumper", a category of Republican who would under no circumstances support Donald in the 2016 general election. Despite this, Vance has since become an economic populist which is closely affiliated with Trump's positions.

The world has been rocked by an attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The former President, running again by office, was targeted by a 20-year-old man while undertaking a rally in Pennsylvania, later revealed as Thomas Matthew Crooks, his motivations are not yet known. By a stroke of sheer luck, Crooks missed his target by a mere inch and grazed Trump by the ear, instead killing a member of the audience.

Five years ago, Hong Kong rioters violently attacked and vandalised the legislative council building in the central area of the city. The event marked a watershed whereby protests over a proposed extradition bill in the special administrative region ultimately turned "ugly" and transformed into a violent insurrection intent on causing chaos and destruction. Yesterday, America's broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR), published a piece praising the attack, called: "5 years ago they protested for freedom in Hong Kong. They want us to remember them."

Last week, as predicted, the Labour Party won a landslide in the UK general election and swept aside the government of Rishi Sunak, inflicting a historic defeat on his Conservative Party. The victory ends a 14-year stint by the previous government that had been largely defined by political turmoil, chaos, scandal, and economic malaise. With a massive majority, it is hoped that Keir Starmer will deliver on offering the country a fresh start.

It is now two days before the British General Election. The latest polling model predicts the Labour Party may win up to 436 MPs, producing a wipeout of the governing Conservatives. The scale of Keir Starmer's predicted victory is so high that at this stage there are no doubts about it, bringing an end to 14 years of Conservative government which commenced with David Cameron's coalition with the liberal democrats in 2010. Over that past decade and a half or so, Britain has changed dramatically, and not for the better.

Last week saw what may prove to be one of the most decisive moments of 2024, and with it, a potential turning point in world history. The US Presidential Election debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump saw the incumbent suffer a car-crash performance, with the President appearing lost, frail, and confused. The horror shows the world witnessed resulted in scores of America's top newspapers producing op-eds and editorials calling for the 82-year-old officeholder to stand aside, producing a civil war inside the Democratic Party on what to do with him.

Last week when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea, the world was watching. The Western media sought to portray the trip, his visit to the country in 24 years, as a desperate act by an isolated "pariah" seeking to shore up whatever support he could for his faltering war in Ukraine. Even though the two countries signed a "mutual defense agreement", in the eyes of the world, Pyongyang is hardly such a partner to be boasting of on paper, is it?

Julian Assange is free. The release of the Wikileaks founder and editor comes after he was incarcerated for five years in a British prison at the demand of the United States. His crime? Publishing leaked documents that ultimately revealed the scope of US war crimes, leaking them to prosecute him on charges which would have amounted to a lifetime in prison. Prior to his arrest, he had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years, a diplomatic immunity that was soon scuppered when a pro-US administration came to power in Quito.

Starting around April 2024, the United States, backed by tactical leaks to the mainstream media, began to accuse China of extensively backing Russia in its war on Ukraine. Although the previous line the US had set from the war's outbreak in 2022 merely demanded China refrained from "direct military support," albeit always to put pressure on Moscow, this new line now began to accuse Beijing of being an "indirect supplier" in the form of critical components and other parts.

Over the weekend the news agency Reuters unleashed a bombshell revelation that the United States Military waged a deliberate psychological warfare and propaganda campaign that was aimed at discrediting China's vaccines in South East Asia, in particular, the Philippines. The campaign, which was run out of Tampa, Florida, involved US military contractors creating hundreds of fake social media accounts that impersonated Filipinos and other Southeast Asian people, trashing the credibility of China's Sinovac vaccine.

Several days ago, a Chinese man stabbed four American scholars in a public park. The scholars were visiting from Cornell College in Iowa. The man was later arrested, while the victims were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. As rare as this kind of incident is, it did not take much for certain individuals, as well as the media at large, to jump on it and push a narrative that this proved China is "not safe" for foreigners to visit. Others went further, speculating baselessly that the attack stemmed from an "Anti-foreigner" "Boxer rebellion" type backlash in China.

It is alleged that the vehicle, with BMW being a German firm, utilized apart from a company that has been linked to "Uyghur forced labor" and is therefore prohibited from entry to the United States via the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (2021)" a highly arbitrary law which conveniently, broadly and opportunistically banned all imports from China's Xinjiang autonomous region on the assumption that unless proven otherwise, these products are made with forced labor. Companies in the region are requested to "prove a negative."

Recently, an academic study conducted by the Lau China Institute of King's College London in conjunction with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, titled: "Shaping the policy debate: How the British media presents China" was widely shared on social media. As its name suggests, the report covered British media discourse of Chinese topics, and came to the conclusion that such coverage was in fact overwhelmingly negative. As researcher Dr. Tim Summers concludes: "Negative media coverage of China reinforces and contributes to widespread negative views about China in the UK.