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The United States said it's concerned by reports of China's interference with oil and gas activities in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, where Vietnam accuses Beijing of violating its sovereignty. Vietnam on Friday demanded China remove a survey ship from Vanguard Bank, which it says lies within Vietnam's 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
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 Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastIf you subscribe to the Mark Twain aphorism that "history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," it's worth noting that Twain didn't write it and that the Donald Trump presidency doesn't rhyme with much of anything.We've had hucksters like P.T. Barnum, demagogues like Huey Long, and corrupt politicians like former Illinois governor (and former Apprentice contestant) Rod Blagojevich, but none of those guys got elected president. Richard Nixon was corrupt and did get elected president, but the country turned its back on Nixon when he incriminated himself on his own tape recordings.The election of Donald Trump—a reality TV host with no previous political experience, who was caught on tape saying when you're a celebrity you get to grab women by the you-know-what, and won 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton—should remove all doubt about the rhyming thing.Instead of Twain, shouldn't the patron saint of American historians be political philosopher Weird Al Yankovich, who cautioned America in the '90s that "everything you know is wrong"? With all due respect to Weird Al, I couldn't get historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer to go quite that far when I talked to them about their book Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.In the last 45 years, Democrats and Republicans started sorting by ideology, judicial appointments became partisan battles, Newt Gingrich turned the House of Representatives into a zero-sum political operation, the Ele
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he had not yet decided on how to respond to an expected U.S. request to send its navy to join a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters off Iran and Yemen. "We've started to hear the United States' thinking on this and we want to keep listening carefully," he said on national television as votes were being counted for the upper house election. "At the same time, Japan also has friendly ties with Iran," Abe added.
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 It appears that China is relying on Russian know-how and experience to develop the reactor for its first nuclear aircraft carrier. As the South China Morning Post reports, China appears to be studying the nuclear reactors on Russia's largest icebreakers, an approach that the Soviet Union also took when it planned to build nuclear carriers in the 1980s. Specifically, Russia has invited China to bid on the construction of a new class of nuclear icebreaker, necessarily requiring the development of surface-ship based reactors. This approach stands in contrast to how the United States and France developed nuclear reactors for their largest carriers, but probably represents the best choice for China at this point. History: To appreciate what's at stake in China's pursuit of nuclear-powered surface warships, it's important to review the experience of the United States and the USSR. After the successful development of the USS Nautilus and the Skate class nuclear attack submarines (as well as the merchant ship NS Savannah) provided proof-of-concept regarding nuclear propulsion, the USN began to evaluate nuclear power for surface warships. The first USN nuclear surface warship was the cruiser USS Long Beach, commissioned in 1961. Long Beach was powered by 2 C1WS reactors, generating around 120 MW, enough power to produce a speed of 30 knots for the 17,000-ton cruiser hull. The USN rapidly followed up with USS Enterprise, powered by 8 A2W reactors, each quite similar in construction and output to the
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Panama's maritime authority said on Saturday it had begun the process of withdrawing the registration of an oil tanker called MT Riah, which was towed to Iran after it disappeared from ship tracking maps in the Strait of Hormuz on July 14. Panama began the flag withdrawal process on Friday after an investigation determined the tanker had "deliberately violated international regulations" by not reporting any unusual situation, the authority said in a statement. Panama, which has the largest shipping fleet in the world, has recently withdrawn flags from dozens of vessels, some of which were operated by Iran.
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 President Donald Trump on Friday offered his help to ease tensions in the political and economic dispute between the United States' two biggest allies in Asia, which threatens global supplies of memory chips and smartphones. Lingering tensions, particularly over the issue of compensation for South Koreans forced to work for Japanese occupiers during World War Two, worsened this month when Japan restricted exports of high-tech materials to South Korea.
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 A jury convicted him of drug trafficking and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies as the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico's largest, most violent drug-trafficking organizations. "We can confirm that Joaquin Guzman is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at United States Penitentiary (USP) Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, located in Florence, Colorado," the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a statement.
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 An unknown assailant stabbed Hong Kong actor Simon Yam on Saturday during a promotional event in mainland China but Yam's injuries were not life-threatening, Chinese state media reported.
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