On June 9, on the anniversary of the anti-extradition bill protest that drew one million people and kicked off Hong Kong’s protest movement last year, several hundred protesters marched the streets of Hong Kong with their cellphone flashlights flickering in defiance of the government’s coronavirus restrictions.

Unlike a year ago, police no longer sign off on scheduled protests—deeming them illegal from the start—and quickly begin to search protesters, fire pepper spray, and disperse the small crowds. 

Does anyone remember when Kim Jong-un, the young and rotund Communist dictator of North Korea, died? I remember well, because it was only last month. As reported by respectable news outlets, death was all but certain, especially since Kim had not appeared at the obligatory celebration of his grandfather’s birthday in April. It’s also well known that the self-indulgent scion of his ruthless dynasty is morbidly obese and not in good health.

Minutes before 9 p.m. Tuesday, Anglican Rev. Canon Bayo James Famonure was praying with his wife and two sons in the family’s sitting room when at least three armed herdsmen stormed into their home in Nigeria’s central Plateau state. 

The latest in a string of attacks on Christian leaders in central Nigeria began with the gunmen demanding money. Famonure said he had no cash, and the intruders shot him in the head and leg. Then they shot his wife, Naomi, in the back, and their two sons in their legs. 

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned of growing abuses of Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities in India in its 2020 annual report released on Tuesday. This year, the commission added India to its Countries of Particular Concern list for the first time since 2004. The country’s ruling Hindu nationalist party instituted citizenship policies in January that USCIRF said could leave the country’s religious minorities, especially Muslims, without legal protections.

40.3 million

The number of slaves in the world, according to the Walk Free Foundation’s 2018 Global Slavery Index. The total number of slaves included 24.9 million persons working in forced labor (including those trafficked for sex) and 15.4 million persons in forced marriages. The United States was rated as low in terms of numbers of slaves and as strong in terms of government responses. However, the United States ranked the highest in terms of imports of products at risk of being produced by slave labor, with $144 billion in such imports.

While the China-related headlines have focused on the novel coronavirus outbreak for the last month and a half, you may have missed other breaking news that reveals the continuing trend of China flexing its control inside and outside the country.

Swedish bookseller sentenced to 10 years

In 2009 Victor Bet Tamraz received a call at his home from an officer with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security summoning him to the church he pastored. When he arrived at Tehran Pentecostal Assyrian Church, officers told him: Stop holding services in Farsi or we close the church.