Xi declares Taiwan “reunification” inevitable days before Trump meeting

Xi declares Taiwan “reunification” inevitable days before Trump meeting

Cassie B.

Chinese President Xi Jinping used the 160th birthday of a long-dead revolutionary to deliver a pointed warning about Taiwan's future Thursday, declaring that the island's absorption into mainland China is an unstoppable historical necessity. The speech came just days before Xi is expected to sit down with President Donald Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen and shortly before pivotal local elections in Taiwan.

Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People to commemorate Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary who helped topple China's last imperial dynasty in 1911, Xi framed Taiwan's future as a settled matter. "The tide of history cannot be stopped," he said. "The complete reunification of the motherland must be realized, and it will certainly be realized."

Taipei fired back almost immediately, dismissing Xi's remarks as a warmed-over position that changes nothing about the island's democratic reality.

Sun Yat-sen's contested legacy fuels competing national narratives

Both Beijing and Taipei claim Sun Yat-sen as their own, turning his anniversary into a proxy battle over who speaks for the Chinese people. Xi called Sun a great national hero and a "great pioneer of China's democratic revolution" whose life work included defending national unity and opposing any effort to divide the country.

In Taiwan, however, Sun remains officially recognized as the "father of the nation," with his portrait still hanging in the presidential office.

The competing interpretations trace back to the civil war that ended in 1949 with the defeated Republic of China government retreating to Taiwan while Mao Zedong's communists founded the People's Republic on the Chinese mainland. More than seven decades later, this island's status is still one of Asia's most explosive geopolitical flashpoints.

Taiwan has also pushed back against Beijing's efforts to claim credit for China's role in World War II, noting that the Allies' wartime partner was the Republic of China government, because the People's Republic didn't exist at the time.

Beijing sticks with 'one country, two systems' as Taiwan cries foul

Xi reiterated China's official position of seeking peaceful reunification under the "one country, two systems" model, which would allow Taiwan to keep some autonomy while becoming part of China. But that framework has little support among Taiwan's major political parties.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said neither the government nor the Taiwanese people could accept a deal that would ultimately mean submitting to Communist Party rule. "As for the wording on Taiwan unification, it isn't much different from the past," council spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh told reporters.

Though Xi didn't threaten military force explicitly in his speech, Beijing has never abandoned that option. Taiwan's defense ministry reported Thursday that 29 Chinese military aircraft, among them J-16 fighter jets and drones, had launched a "joint combat readiness patrol" around the island alongside Chinese warships.

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A Majority At Any Cost? Israel’s Coalition Crisis Puts The Country At Risk

A Majority At Any Cost? Israel’s Coalition Crisis Puts The Country At Risk

 PNW STAFF

Israel’s coalition crisis is exposing a dangerous question: How far will political leaders go to seize power—and what will they hand over to parties whose own words and actions challenge the Jewish state?

At the opening of the new Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu put those words on the record. He quoted Ra’am lawmaker Walid Taha saying Palestinians are the owners of the land and that “this occupation will be set aside.” He cited Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas calling Jews “invaders in this land,” and recalled Abbas’s vision of a “democratic caliphate,” with Palestine “from the sea to the river, on the ruins of Israel.”

These are not abstract arguments about budgets or roads. They describe a political vision in which Israel’s existence is temporary and its Jewish character is something to be overcome.

And yet the opposition is considering relying on these parties to form a government.

The anthem tells the story

At the Knesset’s opening ceremony, lawmakers stood for Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.” Joint List lawmakers walked out. Most Ra’am lawmakers also left the chamber. The anthem speaks of the Jewish people’s ancient hope to live as a free people in their own land. Their walkout was a public rejection of that national story, delivered inside the parliament of the country they seek to help govern.

Mansour Abbas remained in the chamber. But one man’s decision to stay does not erase what the other lawmakers did—or the political meaning of a walkout at the moment Israel’s elected representatives gathered under the symbols of the state.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the coalition talks: parties that reject the national symbols and challenge the Jewish character of Israel are being courted as potential partners by leaders who say they want to govern Israel.

A majority assembled on borrowed votes

The opposition bloc has 48 seats. The Arab-led parties hold 19. Together, they could provide the numbers for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

That is the arithmetic. The danger is what comes with it.

A government dependent on a narrow majority cannot treat its pivotal partners as spectators. Every vote becomes leverage. The parties holding that leverage can demand influence over policy, appointments, budgets, and the government’s response to national emergencies.

Israel faces threats from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other enemies committed to its destruction. In that environment, a government’s ability to act cannot rest on the fragile goodwill of parties whose leaders have questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state or refused to speak plainly about Hamas.

The Hamas test

The question is not whether political leaders can produce carefully worded statements when coalition negotiations demand them. The question is whether they will clearly identify Israel’s enemies and stand with the country when doing so carries a political cost.

Ra’am MK Yasser Hujirat recently sparked outrage when he described Hamas as having a charitable wing and refused in an interview to plainly call the group a terrorist organization. He later said his remarks had been edited and that he condemns terrorism. But Israelis heard the original exchange. A party seeking influence over Israel’s government cannot expect the public to ignore the difference between a direct answer and a later clarification.

After October 7, hesitation over Hamas is not a minor communications problem. Hamas murdered, raped, kidnapped, and burned its way into Israeli communities. Any party seeking a role in Israel’s government should be expected to speak about that plainly.

The Joint List has its own record and political agenda. These parties are not identical, but both are now central to the opposition’s path to power. Their votes may determine who governs, while their positions raise urgent questions about the government they would help sustain.

What will the opposition concede?

Gadi Eisenkot called Netanyahu’s Knesset speech “delusional, divisive, hate-filled and shameful.” But outrage at Netanyahu’s words does not answer the question facing the opposition: What will it concede to secure the support of parties whose leaders have made statements like these and whose lawmakers walked out on Israel’s anthem?

A coalition cannot be judged only by the number of seats behind it. It must also be judged by the commitments and compromises required to keep it alive. If the price of replacing Netanyahu is giving pivotal influence to parties that reject Israel’s national story and resist clear condemnation of its enemies, Israelis deserve to know that before the deal is done.

The same political leaders who once condemned Netanyahu for allegedly empowering dangerous partners now appear willing to make their own bargain. Their standard seems simple: an alliance is unacceptable when it helps their opponent, but acceptable when it helps them take power.

Israel cannot afford that kind of moral and political double standard. A narrow majority built on partners who reject the state’s defining symbols and challenge its Jewish identity could leave the country weaker at the very moment it needs unity and resolve.

The question is not whether 61 votes can be assembled. It is what Israel will be asked to surrender to get them—and whether the leaders pursuing power are willing to put the country’s security ahead of their own political ambitions.

The AI Agenda To Conquer Death

The AI Agenda To Conquer Death

BY PNW STAFF

Imagine a future where a doctor tells you that AI has found a way to keep your body alive for decades longer. Then imagine that, when your body finally fails, a machine carrying your memories and voice is waiting to take your place.

That sounds like science fiction. But the ideas behind it are moving into serious conversations about AI, medicine and the future of human life. Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei recently predicted that cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and mental illness could become “relics of the past” in less than a decade. He has also described a future where AI transforms medical research and radically extends the human lifespan.

The question is no longer whether technology can help us live longer. It is how far humanity will go in trying to make death itself disappear.

The Promise of More Time

AI could help researchers sift through vast amounts of biological data, identify promising treatments and investigate diseases that have resisted generations of medical research. If that leads to new therapies, people may live longer and suffer less. Those advances could be extraordinary.

But the dream quickly expands. If science can add years, why not decades? If each breakthrough buys time for the next one, could medicine reach a point where it extends life faster than aging takes it away? Some futurists call that “escape velocity”: a rolling horizon of new treatments, with death forever pushed into the future.

That is a powerful promise. It is also a promise that places human ingenuity in the role of savior. The body becomes a machine to repair, upgrade and preserve indefinitely. Aging becomes a technical defect. Death becomes the ultimate problem to engineer away.

From Longer Life to a Digital Afterlife

The next step is more radical: preserving the person when the body is gone.

AI can already use a person’s messages, photos, videos and recordings to create a chatbot or avatar that imitates their voice and mannerisms. A grieving spouse might ask it questions. A child might hear a familiar voice again. The imitation may feel intimate, but it is still a system generating responses from data.

The more speculative vision is to map a human brain in enough detail to recreate its patterns in a computer. That digital mind might inhabit a virtual world—or one day control a robotic body. The person’s memories, personality and voice could appear to continue, even after the biological body has died.

But would that actually be the person? A machine might repeat someone’s stories and sound uncannily familiar. It might even produce new sentences in that person’s style. Yet resemblance is not identity. A copy of someone’s memories cannot prove that their consciousness—or their soul—has been transferred. The machine could preserve an echo while the person remains gone.

That is the great leap hidden inside the language of “digital immortality”: the assumption that a human being can be reduced to information, copied, and made to live forever in another form. No technology has shown that this is possible. The ambition itself, however, reveals where the AI age is tempted to go.

The Old Promise in a New Machine

The Bible does not condemn healing or the use of medicine to relieve suffering. Caring for the sick is an act of compassion. But extending earthly life is not the same as conquering death—and no human invention can provide eternal life.

Scripture presents death as an enemy, but it points to resurrection through Jesus Christ as the answer. Christian hope is not a longer biological lifespan, a chatbot trained on our messages or a robotic body carrying a digital imitation. It is life restored by God.

The temptation to defeat death through our own power has an ancient echo. In Eden, the serpent told humanity, “You will not surely die.” The promise was that people could reach beyond God’s limits and seize life on their own terms.

AI may help doctors fight disease. It may give families more time with the people they love. But when technology promises that we can escape death by extending, copying or uploading ourselves, it is selling a counterfeit hope. A digital echo is not resurrection. A machine body is not eternal life. And no human invention can take the place of the Savior who conquered death.

Cold, dark, and broke: As wind energy slumps, taxpayers are forced to pay millions for a fossil fuel backup

Cold, dark, and broke: As wind energy slumps, taxpayers are forced to pay millions for a fossil fuel backup

Lance D Johnson

Britain's energy transition is confronting an expensive reality: electricity must be available when consumers need it, not merely when the weather cooperates. A gas-fired power station near Plymouth reportedly received an extraordinary £1.4 million-per-hour rate to help maintain electricity supplies after wind generation slumped, exposing the costly balancing mechanisms required to keep an increasingly weather-dependent grid functioning. The episode raises a fundamental question about Britain's energy priorities. If renewable generation cannot reliably meet demand during periods of weak wind, how much must consumers ultimately pay to maintain the conventional generating capacity that policymakers have spent years attempting to displace?

The reported payments to Langage Power Station provide a striking illustration of the economic complications associated with managing an electricity grid that increasingly depends on intermittent renewable generation.

According to the Nov. 11 report by Matt Oliver and Emma Taggart, the gas-fired facility near Plymouth was paid the equivalent of £1.4 million per hour on Monday evening as Britain's electricity system experienced a shortage of available wind generation. The report also described payments of approximately £1,500 per megawatt-hour to at least three power stations during the evening demand peak.

Natural gas remains one of the most flexible sources of electricity generation because gas turbines can respond relatively quickly to changing grid conditions. This flexibility makes gas plants valuable even in systems that aspire to rely predominantly on renewable generation. However, maintaining these facilities creates a complicated economic contradiction. A country may subsidize renewable expansion while simultaneously paying conventional generators to remain available for periods when renewable output is insufficient. The result is an electricity system that must finance multiple layers of capacity rather than simply replacing one source with another.

Wind turbines can generate inexpensive electricity when conditions are favorable, but their output is governed by atmospheric conditions rather than consumer demand. A cold, windless evening can therefore produce a very different economic outcome from a mild, windy afternoon.

The electricity grid has physical limitations. Transmission lines can carry only a certain amount of electricity safely. When large quantities of renewable electricity are generated in one region but cannot be transported to another, the system operator may have to pay generators to reduce output in one location and compensate with generation elsewhere. These payments are part of the broader challenge of integrating geographically dispersed renewable generation into an existing network.

The generation price is only one part of the equation. Transmission infrastructure, backup capacity, grid stabilization, storage and balancing services all contribute to the final cost. If Britain intends to maintain an affordable and dependable electricity supply, policymakers must confront these engineering and economic realities rather than treating them as inconvenient exceptions to an otherwise successful transition.

Lapid vows bloc will establish a government following ‘painful compromises’

Lapid vows bloc will establish a government following ‘painful compromises’

TOI

Former prime minister Yair Lapid vows that the Eisenkot-led bloc will form the next government, noting that the coalition building will take time and will require major compromises.

“A government will be formed. It might take some time and we may all go through an emotional roller coaster of anxiety and fear before it happens — but a good, principled government, one worthy of the people of Israel, will be formed,” Lapid says in a video statement.

Lapid says not doing so would be an “unforgivable act of national irresponsibility.”

In the statement, the No. 2 in the B’Yachad party adds that there is no such thing as a perfect government, and “there are no perfect coalition agreements… so yes, we will make compromises. It is impossible to form a government without painful compromises. We likely won’t be able to achieve all our goals or fulfill every single promise within the next six months — but a government will be formed.”

His remarks echo similar comments made by Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot when he accepted the mandate on Sunday to attempt to form the next coalition, noting that not every party would be able to fulfill their campaign promises.

Arab parties and UTJ said to discuss possible cooperation amid coalition talks

Stav Levaton

Ra’am and Joint List leaders are in regular contact with senior United Torah Judaism officials, sharing updates on their negotiations with the Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

According to the report, Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has urged UTJ leaders to open talks with the bloc on legislation regulating Haredi military service. He argued that negotiations could give a more lenient draft arrangement legitimacy across political camps and help UTJ become a kingmaker.

UTJ chairman Yaakov Asher has also reportedly spoken several times in recent days with Abbas and Joint List No. 2 Ahmad Tibi. Asher’s office says the conversations were casual and unrelated to political negotiations.

The Arab parties have not been asked to support UTJ’s position on military service, Kan reports, though they may be asked to abstain in Knesset votes if cooperation develops.

The parties have also discussed potential common ground on freezing the so-called Kaminitz Law, which eases the state’s path toward destroying illegal building, despite the difficulty of obtaining building permits in Arab towns. Freezing the law is reportedly one of the Joint List’s demands of Eisenkot’s bloc, and UTJ has not ruled out supporting it.