Happening now: President Cyril Ramaphosa has taken to the podium to deliver the #SONA2021 before a hybrid sitting.

NEW SCOOP from @zachsdorfman: China's Ministry of State Security has demanded that private Chinese companies, including Baidu and Alibaba, help them process stolen U.S. data, such as from the OPM hack, U.S. intelligence officials

Zach writes, "In what amounts to intelligence tasking, China’s spy services order private Chinese companies with big-data analytics capabilities to process massive sets of information that have intelligence value, according to current and former officials."

“Just imagine on any given day, if NSA and CIA are collecting information, say, on the [Chinese military], and we could bring back seven, eight, 10, 15 petabytes of data, give it to Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and say, ‘Hey, we want all these analytics," said one official.

It's hard to overestimate the significance of this intelligence assessment.

There has been speculation that Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent might have ties to China's security state. In fact, they work directly with them and for them—because they have to. According to US intel.

If you have been enjoying this series of scoops from @zachsdorfman, also take some time in your day to appreciate the skill and dedication that FP editor @BeijingPalmer has put into them.

Bravery

6 May 17, I was privileged to fly on the last chopper that brought back the released Chibok girls. Seeing the girls - young, naive BUT broken, was a reminder of how cruel man is. When we touched down, I stayed with them briefly in the C-130 before the Abuja lap.

Military medics began basic checks, deworming them and tending their wounds. There was one particular girl who had lost a leg. She said the Air Force had hit BHT positions & during the strike she lost a leg. I stared at her, wishing it was a dream.

Sitting beside her was another girl - the bravest girl I ever met. For the purpose of this thread, let us call her 'N'. N kept a daily journal of what happened everyday at the BH camp. I snapped as many pages as I could. The girls attested that she was the leader of the pack.

Right under Boko Haram's nose, every night, after the terrorists had ordered them for 'lights out', she would organise the girls for prayers & morning devotion the next day. I found myself smiling sheepishly at this. This is faith. This is bravery.

When the medics were done & we were notified that the C-130 would depart for Abuja, N made a signal & all the girls sat up, crossed their legs & bend their heads. N led them in prayers. I would later learn that this was their routine when there was danger or the bombs dropped.

Xi Jinping's speech at Davos boiled down to: The world has no choice but to do business with China, and if you want to do business with China, you need to stop criticizing our tyranny and questioning our lies about the

Xi's address to the World Economic Forum will serve as well as any other moment for historians to mark the beginning of the Authoritarian Era. He said nothing new, but he restated the narratives and demands of Chinese fascism from a post-pandemic position of aggressive strength.

For the first time, Xi spoke to a world that is beginning to accept the tenets of authoritarianism, thanks to the incredible political and economic damage from China's coronavirus. China's ideals have become as viral as Covid-19.

Thanks to the pandemic, the political elites of the world now universally see their citizens as dangerous mobs that must be tightly controlled for their own good. Most of them always thought that way, but now they can say it openly and act aggressively on their prejudices.

Xi clearly stated that China will not be contained, censured, or judged for its actions. He denounced Western ideals of human rights as "arrogance" and imperialism. After Covid and Biden's inauguration, he sees no nation with the strength or will to thwart China's ambitions.

1️⃣ How the Yemeni Civil War (2014–present) is portrayed in the main stream media

2️⃣ This one is a little different, it hits close to home in many different ways, the Yemeni Civil War is a unique phenomenon in moder warfare, the majority of people don't even know what's really going on and who's fighting who.

3️⃣ The combatants :
Iranian backed Supreme Political Council (Houthis)
  International recognized Government (Hadi-led government)
  South Yemen Nationalists Southern Transitional Council

4️⃣ The (allegedly Turkish and Qatari backed) Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Yemen Province (ISIL-YP)
 The (allegedly Iranian and Qatari backed) Ansar al-Sharia and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

5️⃣The so called Supreme political council of Yemen is a Mish mash of bad guys and misfits, Iran supplies the Houthis with arms, drones and ballistic missiles, Hezbollah delivers these arms through shell corporations and Hezbollah operators man the missiles

NEW:
BBC has seen the official internal management data for the new post Brexit freight border - roll on roll off lorry outbound flows to EU now at 98% of last February - though was 73% in January... officials say “back to normal”...

That is reference to lorry flow rates - which is what Cabinet Office key committees most concerned about post Brexit in terms of knock on social impact for supplies of everything. Government now confident its “reasonable worst case scenario” of 7k lorries in kent won’t happen...

That is not same as saying trade has normalised - drawing on multiple sources - ferry manifests, Kent checks, french official data - the level of empty lorries on the short straits is around 50%, and was normally around 30%... ...

traffic here was 67% normal in Jan - 82% in feb

Combining those and you get to around 2000 fewer laden export trucks a day in January, still notable fall now. Officials say much was displaced into last year by stockpilers. On other hand French transport sources suggest the higher value Tunnel export empties more like 50-60%

Officials have been tracking the commodity codes on the ferry manifests and have distinguished between freight flows hit so far in 2021 by general COVID downturn - eg clothing and apparel, and post Brexit transition - agriculture, food and groupage