Marco Rubio’s Hot Take

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) helpfully pointed out "... that China wants to become the most powerful country in the world, and they want to do so at our expense. Obviously, we are Americans; we're not going to allow that to happen". 

This was said in an interview aired on the Fox News Channel program "My View with Lara Trump" on July 28, 2026.

Cue the dramatic gasp. A classic case of stating the obvious.  

While China is undoubtedly a rising global superpower, it is not yet the most powerful country on the planet. However, it is closing in rapidly; it's simply a matter of time.

Get used to it, Rubio!

😂😂😂

A historic opening round of six top-flight Scottish Premiership matches wrapped up at Celtic Park yesterday with the Celtic-Dundee fixture. 

Of course, the Scottish champions won, albeit a narrow 1-0 victory over the Dees. After a drab first half, Sweden midfielder Benjamin Nygren met a magnificent cross from Kieran Tierney on 52 minutes for the game's only goal. 

As Celtic head honcho Martin O'Neill said: "The most important thing is to win the game".

Fog of War: Kiev Hides Their Losses

Taking Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at his word, it seems battlefield miracles are now part of military strategy: 5,000 soldiers have apparently risen from the dead. 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟

In his latest update, Zelensky claimed Ukraine only suffered "about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded", along with "a huge number" of troops who simply vanished. He revealed the number – which is lower than the estimate he offered six months ago – in a July 28 interview with Fox News recorded during his visit to the United States. 

Because that figure sits comfortably below previous estimates, we are left with a spectacular statistical reduction of 5,000 fatalities – proving that in modern warfare, the only thing more unpredictable than the front lines is the accounting.

The fatality count contradicts a statement Zelensky made on February 04 of this year, when in an interview with French television network France 2, he updated the official number to 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield. On February 16, 2025, he told NBC that around 46,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed, while claiming that Russian losses were 14 times higher. 

The Ukrainian military have been suffering from chronic manpower shortages amid mounting casualties, widespread draft evasion, and desertion. The latest publicly available official data showed that nearly 290,000 desertion cases had been recorded in Ukraine between 2022 and the autumn of 2025.

Therefore, it shouldn't surprise anybody that Zelenskyy undercounts Ukrainian casualties. Obviously, it is to primarily protect operational security from Russian intelligence and prevent public panic that could hurt domestic morale and troop recruitment. Additionally, keeping the reported loss ratio favorable helps maintain crucial Western military aid by projecting that the war remains winnable. 

According to Moscow, Kiev is losing tens of thousands of soldiers each month on the front lines. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov estimated in December that nearly 500,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed or wounded in 2025 alone. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also suggested that total Ukrainian military casualties, including those killed, wounded, missing and captured, have already exceeded 1 million. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin estimated last month that the Ukrainian military could be losing up to 40,000 soldiers a month through deaths and injuries, adding that Kiev was able to replenish its ranks with only about 30,000 recruits through its increasingly violent forced-mobilization campaign.

Citing Russia’s Defense Ministry, TASS reported on Friday that the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed a total of 673 Ukrainian combat aircraft, 284 helicopters, 193,518 unmanned aerial vehicles, 669 surface-to-air missile systems, 30,380 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,766 multiple rocket launchers, 35,963 field artillery guns and mortars and 67,917 special military motor vehicles since the start of the Special Military Operation. 

China’s $19 Trillion Surge

According to a Facebook post on Thursday by fridayeveryday, "in just 25 years, the Chinese raised their GDP roughly 14-fold, from $1.36 trillion to $19.50 trillion – the largest accumulation of absolute economic output in human history". 

He's right, of course. For nearly three decades, China sustained near-double-digit growth, transforming from an agrarian backwater into the world's factory and, subsequently, an unrivalled technological powerhouse.

Understanding China's Growth Profile

Scale of Transformation: China moved from a low-income country to an upper-middle-income economy, lifting over 800 million people out of absolute poverty.

Percentage Velocity: A 14-fold multiplication of an entire economy within a 25-year window is unprecedented among major global economies.

Manufacturing Expansion: The nation grew to produce over 30% of global manufacturing output, becoming the world's primary goods exporter.

And yet, the West never stops to systematically devalue China's achievements, dripping with malicious envy, savage derision, and unforgiving hostility.

Women's pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan's quest for a second World Tour title this year was ruined by Japan's Sumire Nakade-Miyu Takahashi at the Taipei Open final on Sunday. 

The top seeds were unable to stop world No. 71 Nakade-Takahashi from winning 21-16, 21-18 in the Super 300 tournament. 

😞😞😞😞😞😞

Pearly-Thinaah will have to do better! No two ways about it!

By the way, the Japanese duo are no pushovers. The Taipei Open was their fourth title in five tournaments, having won the Orleans Masters, China Super 100 and Canada Open this year.

Some People Remain as Assholes

Fun fact. Humans are deuterostomes. Which means that when we develop in the womb, the anus forms before any other opening. 

Indeed. During early embryonic development, the first opening that forms (the blastopore) becomes the anus, while the mouth forms later. 

Therefore, this basically means that, at one point, we were nothing but an asshole. 

What's even crazier is that some people never develop beyond this stage! 😁😁😁

On Saturday, Malaysia's Election Commission (EC) declared that Barisan Nasional won 18 of 36 seats in the 16th Negeri Sembilan election on Saturday. And their ally this time around, Perikatan National gained seven seats.

Meanwhile, Pakatan Harapan secured only eleven seats. The other contenders, Bersatu (which contested independently under their own logo), Barisan Jemaah Islamiah Se-Malaysia (Berjasa), Parti Orang Asli Malaysia (Asli), Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) and four Independent candidates failed to win any.

Malaysiakini wrote today that the results indicate that BN and PN supporters from GE15 will vote the same way in current elections, with a near-perfect vote transferability between the two if they continue working together. 

In short, this blue wave will be disastrous for PH, with more defeats to come. 

Notably, their wins were all in seats where non-Malays made up more than 50 percent of voters, and none of their assemblypersons now are Malay. 

[Note: As I had mentioned on July 18, Bersama decided to sit out this election, preferring to focus on the Melaka one].

A total of 646,084 voters, or 72.64 percent, cast their ballots in Negeri Sembilan.

As in Johor, Barisan Nasional dominate as the largest single party. Not all change is good though!

AI Slop Map of Africa at AIDS Conference

A US State Department map of Africa mislabeled every country they depicted during a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference (July 26-31, 2026) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

The slide was so egregiously wrong that multiple attendees whipped out their phones to get a shot of it; Emily Bass, a writer and AIDS expert, wrote about it at length. 

"The US government's failure to catch this error before displaying the slide at the top international AIDS conference in the world, in a session that featured the Director General of Nigeria as an invited guest, is not only disrespectful to African collaborators, it's also a significant tell", wrote Bass.

Senior officials from several African governments were reportedly among those present. 

The map shows six countries receiving US health funding and none of them are correctly named or placed. Nigeria has migrated north to become landlocked in the Sahara. Mozambique has roughly replaced Ethiopia. The Ivory Coast was placed in southern Africa, far from any coast, its name an ignored clue. Uganda and Malawi are not so far off, but drawn with wrong borders. Cameroon was named but assigned no territory at all. While one country on the Gulf of Guinea – a hypothetical union of Ghana, Benin and Togo? – went unnamed. Perhaps that is Cameroon now. 

The speaker was Jeff Graham, the US health envoy who oversees PEPFAR (⁠President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), a United States government initiative.

Whoever ⁠created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work. And Reuters reviewed video of the presentation and concluded that the map was AI slop. 

A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. 

The company said they were investigating the report. The State Department said they took "full responsibility" and blamed a staffer who changed the slide deck shortly before the event. 

This sort of thing is normal in the Trump administration. Last year, the White House's "Make America Healthy Again" report cited studies that did not exist, with fabricated references and other hallmarks of AI slop.

The Renaming of Nations

Throughout history, the global map has been constantly redrawn, not just by shifting borders, but by nations choosing to redefine their own identities on the world stage.

In 2002, East Timor became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century and adopted the Portuguese name of Timor-Leste. 

Following this trend of official updates, Cape Verde changed its UN-recognized English name to Cabo Verde in 2013. 

The Kingdom of Swaziland rebranded as Eswatini in 2018. 

A year later, the Republic of Macedonia officially became North Macedonia. 

And more recently, Turkey registered its name change to Türkiye with the United Nations in 2022. 

Finally, on June 26, 2026, the Pacific island nation of Nauru reclaimed its traditional indigenous identity by officially becoming the Republic of Naoero. 

Malaysian women's doubles pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan are just one match away from winning their second World Tour title of the year after storming into the Taipei Open final on Saturday. 

The world No. 5 took 35 minutes to sweep aside American world No. 27 Francesca Corbett-Jennie Gai 21-15, 21-17 in the last four.

Translating the Diamond Book: Bringing a Bestseller to Malay Readers

Having sold over 1,600 copies of "The Diamond in Your Speech" (2022), we are thrilled to bring our best-selling public speaking book to Malay readers. 

This is a major step toward empowering local voices who may prefer learning and speaking in Bahasa Malaysia.

Brought to life through Rohijas MD Sharif's masterful translation, this book is set to make its highly anticipated debut this November.

Just to restate, the central methodology driving the book teaches speakers how to easily craft meaningful presentations with purposeful impact using the "Diamond" formula" and "Reverse Engineer Your Speech" techniques, making it a valuable resource for those interested in effective communication. 

Truth be told, this is a gem of a book!

The Flagship America Can't Have

It’s been quite a while since Huawei were driven out of most global markets by losing out on Google’s services and apps, with market share plummeting in numerous regions as a result. 

However, as the company continue to innovate and dominate sales back home in China, it turns out that Americans wish they could still purchase and use Huawei phones as well. 

Despite a strict US government ban preventing their devices from being sold through official channels, Huawei recently emerged as the top choice for American tech enthusiasts. In a major industry poll conducted by the mobile technology publication ⁠PhoneArena, asking which Chinese smartphone brand consumers would most like to see properly enter the United States with full carrier support, Huawei led the vote with nearly 31 percent of the total selection. 

This strong showing highlights a deep, ongoing demand among premium Android users for the brand's hardware innovation, even as the broader landscape of international smartphone options shrinks. 

This suggests that Americans not only still miss the company but would be willing to give up Google’s services and accept Huawei’s HarmonyOS as well. Huawei have been pushing out some crazy powerful devices with very unique designs and gimmicks, and you want to get your hands on them. 

Getting a Chinese smartphone in the US is a gargantuan hassle, and no channels exist to purchase one like you would a Samsung, Google Pixel, or Apple phone. Most people who do use Chinese phones in the US get an unlocked model and have to use workarounds to have an almost normal experience. 

But from the said reader poll, we now know how much Americans want access to other Chinese brands after Huawei. In second place is Oppo, with a little over 23 percent of respondents wishing that it would be sold stateside. 

Xiaomi followed with 22 percent of the votes, as the company have been pumping out some excellent smartphones in the last few years with spectacular specs and great ideas like a second display on the rear. 

Meanwhile, a little under 12 percent want Vivo to take on Samsung, Google, and Apple in the US. iQOO got over seven percent of the votes and Realme came last with a little under five percent of you wanting it to operate normally in the States. 

Malaysian women's doubles pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan secured their first semi-final appearance since the All England in March with a hard-earned victory at the Taipei Open yesterday. 

The world No. 5 had to work hard for their 21-14, 21-17 win over Taiwan's world No. 39 Lin Chih Chun-Yang Chu Yun in the quarter-finals.

The important thing is they won! 💪💪💪

But young women's doubles pair Low Zi Yu-Noraqilah Maisarah Ramdan's brave run came to an end. The world No. 67 suffered a 21-11, 20-22, 22-24 heartbreak to Thailand's world No. 36 Hathaithip Mijad-Napapakorn Tungkasatan after a titanic battle. 😞😞😞

End of the Talc Legal War

A decade of courtroom warfare culminated Monday as US attorneys cemented a historic $5.5 billion settlement with Johnson & Johnson, delivering a decisive blow in the fight over cancer-linked talc products. 

J&J said the settlement covers about 76,000 claims, including ones consolidated in federal court in New Jersey, and related cases in state court, representing nearly all of the remaining talc claims against the company. J&J previously settled most of the cases alleging that their talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma. 

Plaintiffs' legal teams affirmed that the agreement marked a successful conclusion to an enduring legal battle. The deal must be accepted by 95% of the ovarian cancer claimants in state ⁠or federal court before it becomes final. 

J&J's vice president of litigation, Erik Haas, maintained the claims were "meritless" and that the company were willing to settle in order to get closure. 😂😂😂 

J&J have long denied that their ⁠talc products caused cancer, saying that talc was safe and did not contain asbestos. Still, the company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. 

Litigation only revived in March 2025 after a three-year standstill. This delay was triggered by Johnson & Johnson's collapsed "Texas two-step" legal strategy, where the corporate giant pushed a shell subsidiary into bankruptcy three distinct times to escape full liability. Each bankruptcy ended in dismissal. 

Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with a multibillion verdict in favor of 22 women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal. 

Unlike ⁠the proposed bankruptcy settlements, Monday's agreement applies only to existing claims and does not address future lawsuits.