Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao ranks the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas by the share of adults under 30 who have a mortgage, painting a clear picture of where today’s twentysomethings can realistically afford a home.

Data for this visualization comes from LendingTree. They analyzed 32,000 anonymized fourth-quarter 2024 credit reports of adults under 30 in the 50 largest U.S. metros to create this ranking. Please see their methodology section for more details.

The American Dream is Still Within Reach In These Cities

At 9.4%, Nashville claims the highest share of under-30 mortgage holders in the country.

The Music City’s housing-price growth has slowed from its pandemic peak, and a steady influx of jobs in healthcare, tech, and entertainment is giving young workers both stable incomes and loan approval power.

Indianapolis (8.4%) and Pittsburgh (7.0%) follow, proof that mid-sized metros with diversified economies and moderate price tags remain happy hunting grounds for first-time buyers.

These leaders share several traits: median home prices well below the national average, shorter commute times that widen the geographic radius of affordable neighborhoods, and state-level programs that reduce down-payment hurdles.

ℹ️ Related: Here’s the latest median home prices by state.

Midwest Cities and South Dominate Home Affordability

Beyond the top three, the next dozen cities are heavily concentrated in the Midwest and South.

Cincinnati, Louisville, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio all break the 5% threshold.

Lower land costs and more flexible zoning keep construction pipelines open, while relatively low student-debt balances reduce the debt-to-income ratios that lenders scrutinize.

ℹ️ Related: See how Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, and Oklahoma perform on average student debt by state.

Even mid-tier Rust Belt metros such as Detroit (4.5%) and Minneapolis (4.3%) do better than larger coastal cities.

Their affordable starter-home inventories help offset slower wage growth. This illustrates that absolute price matters more than headline salary figures when it comes to qualifying for a mortgage before age 30.

Coastal State Economies Are Punishing for Home Ownership

At the other end of the spectrum stand San Jose (0.8%), New York City (1.2%), and Los Angeles (1.3%).

Sky-high property values inflate required down payments to six figures, while stricter land-use rules limit new supply and keep entry-level stock scarce.

Even Boston (1.4%) and Seattle (2.6%), cities with strong job markets, show that surging demand can overwhelm wage gains. This can and push homeownership beyond the reach of many young professionals.

ℹ️ Related: The median age of first-time home buyers in the U.S. is now 38, the oldest ever recorded.

For a broarder perspective, check out: Where Homes are Affordable in North America Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The audacious theft of priceless jewels from the Louvre in Paris on Oct. 19 was called “the heist of the century” by several local newspapers, and commentators quickly drew parallels to similar headline-grabbing crimes over the years.

Questions about security arrangements at the world’s most visited museum, which attracts close to 9 million visitors per year, have been raised in the aftermath of the broad-daylight theft, along with speculation about who could be behind the crime.

As special investigators scramble to catch those involved, here’s what to know about how the heist was pulled off in mere minutes, what was stolen—and why experts fear the jewels may never be recovered.

How It Happened

Thieves wearing balaclavas broke into an upstairs gallery on the morning of Oct. 19 using a truck-mounted basket lift known as a “cherry picker” to smash an upstairs window before looting precious objects from an area that houses the French crown jewels.

The robbers struck at 9.30 a.m. local time, just half an hour after the museum opened its doors to the public, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told French TV.

They pulled up on a road along the Seine River and climbed an extendable ladder on the cherry picker to break into a window of the Galerie d’Apollon building. Although the thieves didn’t carry conventional weapons, they threatened the museum’s guards with the angle grinders they used to slice through the museum’s window, according to Beccuau.

Le Monde and other French media outlets reported that there were four thieves, two of whom wore reflective yellow vests intended to make them look like construction workers. Two rode in the truck, while two were on scooters.

The gang tried unsuccessfully to set fire to the crane as they fled the scene of the crime on motorbikes.

The museum was evacuated as the alarm sounded following the smash and grab, remaining closed through Oct. 20.

What Was Stolen?

While nine objects were targeted, eight were successfully stolen. The thieves dropped the ninth, the crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, during their escape, the prosecutor said. The piece is adorned with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum’s website.

Drouot auction house President Alexandre Giquello told Reuters that the auction house would value the crown at “several tens of millions of euros,” noting that in his opinion, it was “not the most important item” in the targeted haul.

The Culture Ministry said the eight stolen items include:

• A tiara from a sapphire jewelry set belonging to Queen Marie‑Amélie and Queen Hortense
• A necklace from the same sapphire set
• A single earring (one half of a pair) from that sapphire set
• An emerald necklace from the jewelry set of Empress Marie‑Louise (Napoleon I’s second wife)
• A pair of emerald earrings from the Marie-Louise set
• A brooch known as the “reliquary brooch”
• A tiara belonging to Empress Eugénie (wife of Napoleon III)
• A large bodice-knot brooch (corsage bow brooch) belonging to Empress Eugénie

Mystery surrounds why the thieves did not also steal the Regent diamond, which is housed in the Galerie d’Apollon and has an estimated value of more than $60 million, according to Sotheby’s.

Who Could Be Behind It?

Beccuau said in the immediate aftermath of the crime that nothing was being ruled out and that all lines of inquiry were open—although foreign interference was not among investigators’ main hypotheses.

She said it was likely that the robbery was either commissioned by a collector—in which case there was a chance of recovering the pieces in a good state—or carried out by thieves interested only in the monetary value of the jewels and precious metals.

“We’re looking at the hypothesis of organized crime,” the prosecutor said, noting that the culprits could be thieves working on spec for a buyer or seeking jewels that could be used to launder criminal proceeds.

“Nowadays, anything can be linked to drug trafficking, given the significant sums of money obtained from [this crime].”

The probe is being led by a specialized police unit with a high success rate in solving high-profile robberies, according to French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

Why Wasn’t Security Tighter?

The heist has reignited a debate around funding for museums, which are far less secure than banks, despite being increasingly targeted by thieves.

Earlier this year, officials at the Louvre urgently requested funding from the French government to restore and renovate the museum’s aging exhibition halls and better protect its countless works of art.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that a new government plan for the Louvre announced in January “provides for strengthened security.” Despite the French president’s promise of a 700 million euro refurbishment, museum staff went on strike in June over what they said was dangerous overcrowding.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati said on a visit on Oct. 20 to the scene of the crime that the issue of museum security is not new.

“For 40 years, there was little focus on securing these major museums, and two years ago, the president of the Louvre requested a security audit from the police prefect. Why? Because museums must adapt to new forms of crime,” she said. “Today, it’s organized crime—professionals.”

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said the crime cast France in a “deplorable” light. Opposition politicians criticized the government for what they branded a national humiliation at a time when the country is already deep in political crisis.

Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, an organization that specializes in recovering stolen art, said, “The Louvre is one of the most well funded museums in the world. And if they’re going to be hit, every museum is vulnerable.”

France will review the protection of cultural sites across the country and beef up security if needed, officials said on Oct. 20.

Does the Theft Surpass Previous Heists?

This is far from the first theft from the famous Parisian museum, which has been targeted many times, with some of those headline-hitting heists being made into films.

In one of the most famous and daring art thefts in history, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the museum in a 1911 theft carried out by a former employee who had knowledge of the layout and security of the building.

Read the rest here…

Measuring stress levels through hair samples could provide important clues about mental health risks in children living with chronic physical illnesses, research suggests.

“Hair cortisol offers a non-invasive, easy-to-collect biomarker that could one day be used to screen children and track whether treatments or support programs are helping to reduce stress,” study co-author Mark Ferro, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, said in a press statement.

An estimated 40 percent of children in Canada live with chronic physical illnesses (CPI)—a number that has been increasing over the past decades.

As George Citroner details below for The Epoch Times, those with higher cortisol levels are more likely to develop mental health problems at rates ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent, significantly higher than the prevalence in healthy children, researchers noted.

These conditions can lead to lower quality of life, suicidal thoughts, and greater use of health care services.

Chronic Illness Linked to Mental Health Difficulties

Published this year in Stress and Health, the study tracked 244 Canadian children with chronic physical illnesses over four years. Researchers used hair cortisol, a biological marker that reflects stress over time, to measure stress levels.

The results showed that more than two-thirds of the children had consistently high cortisol levels.

When comparing these stress patterns to reports of emotional and behavioral difficulties, scientists saw that children whose cortisol levels declined showed fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression, and behavior problems than those whose levels remained high.

Why Hair Testing Matters

Unlike current screening methods that rely on behavioral assessments after problems emerge, hair cortisol testing could identify at-risk children years earlier. The hormone cortisol accumulates in hair over months, providing a long-term picture of stress levels that blood or saliva tests cannot capture.

According to researchers, this discovery could help guide prevention and treatment strategies to better support children’s well-being.

“Our findings suggest that chronically high stress, measured through hair samples, could help identify children with CPI at the highest risk for developing mental health problems. This opens the door to earlier and more targeted support,” lead study author Emma Littler, a University of Waterloo doctoral candidate in public health sciences, said in the press statement.

As hair develops, cortisol from the bloodstream and from secretions of sweat and sebaceous glands becomes embedded within the hair shaft.

Human scalp hair typically grows at a fairly consistent rate of about 1 centimeter per month, which allows a 1 centimeter segment of hair to serve as a reliable indicator of the average stress level during that month.

To create a historical record of cortisol exposure, hair is often sectioned into segments; for instance, a 3-centimeter sample can be divided into three 1-centimeter segments, each representing a separate month. In laboratory analysis, the hair sample undergoes washing to eliminate external contaminants, followed by pulverization and incubation in a solvent such as methanol to extract the cortisol.

The extracted hormone is then measured using highly sensitive techniques such as enzyme-linked immunoassay or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The resulting measurement is expressed as the amount of cortisol per milligram of hair, typically in picograms per milligram.

Dr. Molly McVoy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, noted that anxiety and mood disorders such as depression are most commonly associated with chronic medical conditions. She pointed out that in these conditions, changes in cortisol are signs that a child is more at risk for an anxiety or mood disorder.

Warning Signs Parents Should Watch For

McVoy listed specific signs or symptoms parents should watch for in children that might indicate they’re experiencing high stress or they have mental health concerns.

“I recommend parents think about what their [kids are] supposed to [be] doing at that age,” she added. “Are they able to do it? If not, we wonder what’s getting in the way.”

For example, school-aged children who struggle to learn, make friends, or enjoy those activities—and teenagers who are not engaged with peers—may be showing warning signs of stress or mental health concerns, McVoy said.

Other warning signs include disrupted sleep patterns in children without access to devices that could keep them awake, and the inability to engage in age-appropriate activities.

How to Reduce Stress in Children

McVoy emphasized that children with chronic diseases need their lives kept as “typical” as possible, while acknowledging their different needs.

Do:

• Help them attend school regularly when possible

• Encourage participation in sports and activities they can manage

• Facilitate time with friends

• Maintain healthy sleep and physical activity routines

Don’t:

• Remove all expectations you would have for healthy children

• “Overcompensate” by making life too easy

• Treat them so differently that they feel socially separated from their peers

Parents often overcompensate in how they treat their chronically ill children, by removing all expectations they would have for a healthy child, McVoy said. However, this can make kids feel more stressed and increase feelings of social separation.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Portugal’s parliament has approved a proposal to ban the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public spaces, with right-wing party Chega leading the initiative and its leader, André Ventura, telling those who disagree to “catch a flight back” to their countries of origin.

The bill, supported by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Iniciativa Liberal, and CDS, passed its first reading on Thursday despite opposition from the Socialist Party (PS), Livre, the Communist Party (PCP), and the Left Bloc.

It will now be examined by the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, and must receive presidential sign-off before becoming law.

The proposal states that “the use of clothing designed to conceal or obstruct the display of the face in public spaces” will be prohibited, with exceptions for health reasons, places of worship, and diplomatic or consular facilities.

Penalties for violating the ban would range from €200 to €4,000.

Ventura argued that a woman “forced to wear a burqa” ceases to be “free and independent” and instead “becomes an object.” He accused the left of hypocrisy for defending women’s rights while “accepting a culture that oppresses them.”

“If you want to wear a burqa, there’s a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It’s easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, wherever you want.”

Chega leader @AndreCVentura speaks after the Portuguese… pic.twitter.com/DdyBUCnOBF

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 20, 2025

Speaking to journalists after the vote, Ventura addressed immigrants directly.

“If you want to wear a burqa, there’s a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It’s easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco — wherever you want. You’re not needed here, sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Chega lawmaker Madalena Cordeiro echoed the party’s stance, telling parliament:

“This isn’t Bangladesh, where everything is done as they please,” and declaring, “Enough of pretending that all cultures are equal.”

Ventura also noted that several European countries, including France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, have already enacted full or partial bans on face coverings, citing a European Court of Human Rights ruling that upheld France’s law as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The bill still requires the approval of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who could sign it into law, veto it, or refer it to the Constitutional Court for review.

The debate in Portugal comes amid a broader European push to limit Islamic dress in public spaces.

In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party last week pledged to ban the hijab — a headscarf that does not cover the face — in all public places. “We must have Denmark back. A Denmark where there are no scarves in schools, where Danish is spoken in nursing homes, where the Danes are masters of their own house again,” party leader Morten Messerschmidt said.

In the Netherlands, both Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) and Caroline van der Plas’s Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) have promised to extend the current partial burqa ban across all public institutions ahead of next week’s parliamentary elections.

Read more here…

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Hungary is now the safest country in Europe because of Viktor Orbán’s leadership and its commitment to diplomacy over war, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared on Sunday, announcing that Budapest is preparing to host a peace summit agreed by the American and Russian presidents.

Szijjártó said Hungary is “the most vocal European member of the international peace camp” and praised Orbán as the only European leader who has maintained “mutual respect” and cooperation with both Washington and Moscow through the war in Ukraine.

He said that from the very beginning of the Russian invasion, Hungary had offered to act as a mediator and is now ready to host a summit aimed at ending the conflict.

“We have just reached the point where the American and Russian presidents have agreed that the peace summit will be held in Budapest,” Szijjártó said. He echoed Orbán’s description of Hungary as “an island of peace,” contrasting this with what he described as “war policies” pursued by almost all other EU member states except Slovakia and Hungary.

“Brussels is preparing for war; it wants to arm Ukraine, wants to finance Ukraine with the money of the European people, while Hungary is organizing a peace summit. That is the difference,” he added.

The minister said Budapest had already been mentioned as a possible venue during preparations for a previous summit in Alaska. Orbán recently spoke with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and Hungarian officials have held talks with U.S. and Russian diplomats. Preparatory meetings will now be organized, after which the summit’s agenda and date will be finalized, Szijjártó said.

Rejecting accusations that Hungary had isolated itself, he argued the opposite was true: “The European Union has isolated itself from the world’s most powerful political players.”

He accused Brussels of alienating itself from the United States through hostility toward Trump, from China by calling it a “systemic rival” and imposing tariffs on Chinese electric cars, from Russia through sanctions and soaring energy costs, and from Africa by attaching “gender-mad conditions” to trade cooperation.

Szijjártó also accused European politicians of trying to block peace efforts.

“We can be sure that the vast majority of European Union politicians will do everything in the coming weeks or days to prevent this summit from taking place, because if the summit takes place, it offers a chance for peace, and they are interested in prolonging the war,” he said.

Read more here…

Authored by Tamuz Itai via The Epoch Times,

For nearly three decades, the Western world has hardly had a calm time—terrorist attacks, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, financial meltdowns, pandemics, and deepening political fractures. Each has seized the headlines, drained treasuries, and monopolized the attention of policymakers from Washington to Brussels.

The result? A fractured focus, where urgent fires crowd out long-term threats.

But when aligning these moments of Western disarray against Beijing’s calendar, a pattern emerges. For whatever reason, many of China’s most pivotal advances—territorial, economic, institutional—have landed precisely during, or just ahead of, the West’s moments of distraction.

A Chronicle of Overlaps

It begins in the summer of 1997, on July 2. Thailand devalues its baht, unleashing the Asian Financial Crisis—that would engulf markets from Seoul to Jakarta, wiping out trillions in value and exposing the fragility of emerging “Asian Tiger” economies. Markets convulsed, currencies plummeted, and lenders scrambled.

Yet on July 1—just one day prior—Britain handed Hong Kong back to Beijing after 156 years of colonial rule. At the very moment Asia’s financial markets crashed, China assumed sovereignty over one of the world’s premier financial hubs: a gateway to global capital that would soon fuel its export machine.

Fast-forward to May 1999 during NATO’s Kosovo campaign. On May 7, U.S. warplanes, in a tragic error, bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three and wounding dozens. Fury erupts. Days of protests surge outside American missions in Beijing and beyond, a raw wound that would fester in U.S.–China relations for years.

It’s worth noting that in China, demonstrations of this scale are almost always state-managed. That embassy strike seems to have etched a scar, eroding trust at a moment when the West was consumed by the moral and military imperatives of intervention. In July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched its persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual group, which continues to this day.

The turn of the millennium brought Sept. 11, 2001: Al-Qaeda’s hijackers struck the World Trade Center, claiming nearly 3,000 lives in the deadliest assault on U.S. soil. Washington, reeling, pivots to a global war on terror, reshaping alliances, budgets, and intelligence priorities.

Three months later that year, China formally joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), capping 15 years of negotiations and thrusting itself into the rules-based global economy, only to eventually flout most of them. While America mourned and mobilized, Beijing integrated, gaining access to markets that would fuel its manufacturing ascent.

By March 20, 2003, U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein in a campaign that would entangle the West for two decades. That same month, whispers of a new threat came from China: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) began spreading internationally, prompting the WTO to issue its first global alert on March 12 for clusters of atypical pneumonia in Guangdong and Hanoi. As Washington’s bandwidth vanished into the sands of the Middle East, the first modern pandemic came from the East, with Beijing initially denying it and later clamping down on reporting its true scale—basically punishing officials who reported the numbers, an early warning.

Migrant workers wearing protective face masks make their way to the train station as they leave the city over worries about SARS in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, China, on May 2, 2003. Christian Keenan/Getty Images

On July 7, 2005, suicide bombers shattered London’s transit system, killing 52 in a coordinated assault that, per the UK government’s inquiry, exposed gaping holes in counterterrorism readiness. Europe was alarmed, tightening borders and redoubling intelligence-sharing.

Meanwhile, Beijing, undeterred, accelerated its outbound investments through eased merger-and-acquisition rules and launched the inaugural U.S.–China Senior Dialogue in August that year—a forum for economic and security talks that would evolve into deeper bilateral ties. As Europe focused on anti-terrorism, China wove itself more tightly into Western financial webs.

August 2008 brought the Beijing Olympics, a dazzling showcase of China’s having “arrived.” By Sept. 15, Lehman Brothers’ collapse ignited the Global Financial Crisis, plunging the West into recession and prompting bailouts from Wall Street to London to Frankfurt. By November, Beijing unveiled a staggering $586 billion stimulus package—a lifeline that not only stabilized its own economy but propped up global commodity demand, from iron ore to oil. As Western banks teetered, China’s fiscal firepower accelerated its trajectory from factory floor to a creditor nation.

Protesters hold signs outside the White House during a demonstration organized by Amnesty International calling on China to respect human rights ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, in Washington on Feb. 11, 2008. Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Europe’s sovereign debt implosion followed in May 2010, with Greece’s first bailout exposing fissures in the eurozone. Beijing responded by ramping up overseas lending through state banks and, in September, imposing restrictions on rare-earth mineral exports. Massive investments and loans from Beijing began to buy European nations’ silence and acquiescence.

The early 2010s had multiple events: the Arab Spring protests of 2011 and 2012; Libya’s NATO-backed civil war; and persistent eurozone tremors. Western capitals juggled regime change, refugee flows, and austerity. In the shadows, Beijing methodically prepared its own transition of leadership: Xi Jinping’s elevation as heir apparent at the 2012 Party Congress, locking in a leadership transition primed for a more assertive posture. Global chaos provided the perfect cover for internal stealing and less scrutiny.

In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, defying current international norms and drawing Western sanctions. Then, in October, 21 nations—including several U.S. allies—signed the memorandum to found the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Beijing’s rival to the World Bank. As the West isolated Moscow, China was building a parallel financial architecture.

In 2015, in Europe, ISIS’s rampage culminated on Nov. 13 in the Paris attacks, killing 130 in gunfire and bombs that sent the continent into mourning and heightened alerts. That summer, China’s stock market had already cratered, erasing trillions in value by July; Beijing responded with capital controls in August, throttling outflows to stem the bleed. The EU’s gaze was on the jihadists, while Beijing fortified its financial ramparts.

The Brexit vote on June 23, 2016, fractured the façade of the European project, ushering in years of negotiation and uncertainty. Mere weeks later, on July 12, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against the CCP’s expansive South China Sea claims, invalidating its “nine-dash line.” Beijing dismissed it outright, doubling down on island-building and patrols. The EU disarray mirrored—and perhaps muted—any unified Western rebuke.

By June 2019, Hong Kong’s streets ignited over an extradition bill, with mass protests that tested the CCP’s grip. This overlapped with escalating U.S. scrutiny: indictments against Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, unsealed in January but roiling through the year with arrest and extradition battles. Tech security emerged as the new fault line in great-power rivalry.

An “anti-extradition” parade with a million people packed the entire street in Hong Kong on June 9, 2019. Sung Pi-Lung/The Epoch Times

The pandemic arrived in late 2019, and in March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global emergency, with a reaction that overwhelmed hospitals and economies. Three months later, on June 30, Beijing imposed its National Security Law on Hong Kong, criminalizing dissent and drastically eroding the “one country, two systems” promise. Health crises drowned out major criticism.

August 2021 marked the United States’ exit from Afghanistan, which many have described as dismal, stranding allies and degrading U.S. credibility. Beijing wasted no time, hosting Taliban delegations in July and August to signal budding ties and position itself to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leading to a protracted war of attrition. Just three weeks earlier, on Feb. 4, Xi and Putin had inked their “no-limits” partnership, a pact that would deepen military and economic bonds as missiles rained on Kyiv.

Hamas’s assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, unleashed the Gaza war, polarizing allies and straining Western unity. Earlier that year, in March, Beijing had brokered a surprise détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As the West navigated the renewed focus on the Middle East, China hedged, courting all energy-rich states while supporting Hamas.

And now, in 2025, the cycle spins on. The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs—up to 60 percent on Chinese imports—face mounting court challenges, including a U.S. Supreme Court review set for its September term following the Federal Circuit’s Aug. 29 strike-down of IEEPA-based duties. Beijing adapts by rerouting supply chains through new trade blocs and circumvention paths, as global commerce hardens into rival spheres—a new name for the much-denied decoupling.

Emerging Patterns 

We can identify six tendencies when looking at the above ledger of corresponding events:

1. Distraction windows: China’s boldest strokes cluster amid Western crises, from territorial grabs to institutional launches.

2. Counter-cyclical advantage: When Western economies falter—think 2008 or 2010—Beijing expands, lending abroad or hoarding resources.

3. Institutional stress tests: As Wall Street wobbles or NATO strains, China erects alternatives, such as the AIIB, or defies rulings, such as those of The Hague.

4. Domestic consolidation: Global uproar muffles internal clampdowns, from Xi’s elevation to Hong Kong’s National Security Law.

5. Hedging and broker posture: In Gaza or Ukraine, Beijing plays the seemingly neutral broker, as with the Iran–Saudi Arabia deal.

6. A rhythm of 6 to 12 months: Moves happen within crisis windows, not dragging into years.

Sometimes, China acts just before the storm—the Olympics pre-Lehman, the Xi–Putin pact pre-Ukraine—and the distraction mutes retaliation. Did Beijing foresee these events, or worse? Perhaps. We have no proof either way. But the CCP’s ceaseless boundary-probing pays off when the West is otherwise occupied.

Addressing the Skeptics

To be clear, this pattern is far from flawless. But reality often is. For example, the Hong Kong handover was planned decades prior; the WTO accession was in the works for 15 years. Some moves, such as the 2008 stimulus, seemed to stem from China’s export problems. More generally, it is known that great powers act ceaselessly in many directions, so overlaps are inevitable.

However, so far, we’ve been pointing to a correlation, not a causation. The pattern does hold as a tendency. It is a signal, not noise. For whatever reasons, around the time distractions happen, Beijing pushes—and often prevails. 

We can see that the War on Terror devoured trillions—$8 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan alone, per Brown University’s Costs of War project—diverting the executive branch, Congress, and alliances’ energy from China strategy. The Obama administration’s 2011 “pivot to Asia” was under-resourced and hampered by ongoing Middle Eastern quagmires.

The same goes for internal drivers—for example, the Chinese 2008 stimulus. One might say that it was to salvage China’s export economy, not to exploit the Western crisis. However, those domestic imperatives do gain extra runway when rivals are suddenly sidelined.

When it comes to criticizing China’s conduct, even in the Iraq era, American diplomacy still hammered human rights violations and undervaluation. But try to imagine the alternative: undivided focus yielding sharper sanctions, faster alliances, and bolder industrial policies. Distraction didn’t completely erase a response—it greatly diluted it.

It is important to note here that the CCP is extremely sensitive about public human rights criticism. This could be a huge leverage point for the West, which sadly it rarely uses.

Interpretation and Implications

All of the above does indicate strategic timing: opportunism, at minimum. Distractions slash the price of audacity, whether post-facto or preemptive. It’s also a dual-track advance: outwardly, institutions such as AIIB court the Global South; inwardly, controls tighten from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. Gains are then baked in before resistance forms.

This pattern reveals as much about Western vulnerabilities as it does about Chinese strategy, and perhaps a lack of a bird’s-eye view of the true picture of geopolitics. Our responses have been either too little or too much—and decidedly too late—creating gaps for the CCP to fill. 

As Mark Twain reputedly said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Here, the verse is unmistakable: When the West averts its gaze, China steps forward. It is up to us to be attuned to the rhyming and be ready to act.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Rebecca Day via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As country music grew in popularity in America throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the roots of the genre also took hold in an unlikely place: Japan.

During World War II, the Armed Forces Radio Service provided entertainment for American troops stationed in Japan. But in the days after the war ended in 1945, the United States established a more permanent, far-reaching band of stations for its servicemembers remaining on bases in the rebuilding country. Until it was disbanded in 1997, this was known as the Far East Network.

Despite the ban on American music in Japan at the time, there was a local demand for it. Japanese people found ways to tune into Far East Network radio stations to hear singing cowboys and Appalachian banjo pickers. By listening in, they got a formal introduction to country music—to the art of the fiddle and Western twang.

Music Inspires ‘Cultural Exchange’

Japanese culture became increasingly acquainted with American culture during WWII, and country music’s themes resonated far beyond those listening to it in the United States.

Toru Mitsui, author of “Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West,” is featured in “Far Western,” a documentary covering the rise of country music in Japan. According to music site Whiskey Riff,  “Mitsui explains how the Western ideals of freedom, individuality, and personal storytelling began to resonate through the music itself.”

“It wasn’t just music anymore. It was a cultural exchange.”

A Good Story

One of Japan’s longstanding musical forms, the Enka genre, is sometimes described as “Japanese blues.” The narrative style focuses on lyrical themes like those found in American country music—love, loss, hardship, and triumph—and this helped pave the way for Japanese people to relate to the music of a culture so seemingly different from theirs.

In other words, like America, Japan loves a good story. It is through that love of story that a bridge was built between the two cultures.

Japanese listeners of country music were enthralled by the genre’s artistic tradition of emotive storytelling. They embraced singing cowboys like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, as well as pioneering artists like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.  

In September 1945, the first radio station for the Far East Network went live in Tokyo: WVTR. The station aired a cowboy-themed radio show called “Chuck Wagon Time” featuring country music. By the late 1940s, the show had grown significantly in popularity. Today, some of Japan’s most well-known singing cowboys were first inspired by the program.

The influential radio program became a “catalyst for the development of a western or cowboy band movement in the capital city, a function duplicated by WVTQ in the Kansai area (western Japan),” wrote Michael Furmanovsky, professor at Kyoto’s Ryukoku University.

In his paper, “American Country Music in Japan: Lost Piece in the Popular Music History Puzzle,” Furmanovsky noted:

“According to Mitsui, the first ever ‘cowboy’ group was the Western Melodians, formed in 1947 by Toyama Takehiko. … A year later Toyama formed the Western Ramblers and recruited vocalist ‘Teddy’ Hara, a 17-year-old high-school student from a wealthy family who had first encountered cowboy songs on a short morning-time western music show broadcast by WVTR.”

‘Country Gold’

One of Japan’s most popular singing cowboys from the 1950s is musician Charlie Nagatani. Born in 1936, he discovered the genre when he was 20 years old while taking in a night of live music to celebrate his birthday. He quickly fell in love with the genre and began performing with a series of bands, ultimately heading up his own band, The Cannonballs. In 1989, he organized Japan’s first country music festival, Country Gold, held in his birthplace of Kumamoto. The inaugural event drew around 8,000 people, sparking a movement that made it a yearly festival.

In 2013, the international country event celebrated its 25th anniversary and featured contemporary artists who have popularized some of country’s modern classic hits, including Aaron Tippin and the late Daryle Singletary. The 2013 show garnered a 25 percent increase in festival attendance compared to the previous year. Over its tenure, country stars like Dierks Bentley and the Charlie Daniels Band took the stage.

In 2019, the festival opened its gates for the final time after running for 31 years.

But Nagatani hasn’t slowed down. He remains a pioneering figure of country music in both his home country of Japan and in America. He makes the long trek to Nashville on a regular basis, where he has performed many times at the Grand Ole Opry. His Opry performance in May 2025 marked his 30th appearance on the iconic country stage.

‘Rich Musical Culture’

Over time, America and Japan have developed a symbiotic relationship, with music-lovers of both cultures embracing each other’s tastes and styles.

Today, Rocky Top is a frequented live music venue in the Ginza district of Tokyo. It features country, bluegrass, and Americana performers. The musical hub is named after one of country music’s classic hits made famous in 1967 by the a bluegrass band called the Osborne Brothers.

Like America, the bluegrass genre also has a significant following with our neighbors in the Pacific. The annual Takarazuka Bluegrass Festival features Japanese performers each year who honor the genre. The festival first took place in 1972, and it is considered to be “the third longest-running bluegrass festival in the world.”

The 2023 Chigasaki Jamboree festival featuring bluegrass music was in part inspired by the father of the genre, Bill Monroe, and his band, the Blue Grass Boys.

Western classical music remains an active part of Japanese culture, and America has since embraced pop stylings emanating from the country.

Lasse Lehtonen from the Finnish Music Quarterly notes the delicate balance that Japan fosters to maintain their cultural autonomy.

“The country has a rich musical culture that today is closely aligned with the West yet continues to explore its own unique pathways.”

Vice President JD Vance was in Israel Tuesday, where expressed confidence that the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip would hold, despite a brief flare-up in fighting on Sunday which saw Israeli forces launch dozens of new airstrikes.

During visit to the newly established US-Israel ceasefire coordination center in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, Vance emphasized he’s optimistic the truce will hold, but also that Hamas must be fully disarmed. He was joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump on Tuesday had warned from Washington that he could deploy international forces to fight Hamas, but that he will give the group a chance to honor the ceasefire, and return more bodies of hostages.

The president posted the following to Truth Social on Tuesday morning:

“Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and ‘straighten our Hamas’ if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us.”

However, he didn’t name any specific countries. But he did praise Indonesia, interestingly, for its humanitarian response related to the crisis.

In southern Israel, Vance’s most interesting statement involved denunciation of the mainstream press, which he accused of rooting for failure as another opportunity to trash the Trump White House:

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday denounced what he called “a weird attitude” in the American and Western press, accusing some in the media of “rooting for failure” as a historic Middle East peace plan moves forward.

“Things are going, frankly, better than I expected that they were,” Vance said at a news conference in southern Israel, announcing the opening of the new Civilian-Military Cooperation Center. “This is a very, very tough situation. You have two peoples, two enemies who fought a very tough conflict against each other.

He took the opportunity to also praise Israel for defending itself against terrorism – a common refrain among US officials. “You have a terrorist organization on one hand that murdered a lot of innocent people,” he said. “You’ve got an Israeli army that was defending itself on the other, that has learned a lot over the past couple of years.”

Vance also took the opportunity to reiterate there will be “no American boots on the ground” inside Gaza…

🇺🇸VP Vance praises President Trump’s historic peacemaking in Israel:

“The only real mediators are the United States of America…I think the American people should be proud of it, but they should know that there are going to be no American boots on the ground in Gaza.” pic.twitter.com/bQlzWJgQFp

— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) October 21, 2025

As for the coordination center in Kiryat Gat’s industrial zone, which was established as part of the comprehensive Trump peace plan, it hosts Israeli and American troops along with civilian contractors.

Further there are military personnel from the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Denmark, and Jordan. Flags from each participating nation are displayed inside the large facility, according to Israeli media descriptions.

Authored by Franke Miele via RealClearPolitics,

In a sense, it’s old news. In December 2021, CNN reported that the House’s select January 6 Committee had subpoenaed phone records of more than 100 people.

But that was mostly Trump officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. No surprise there. After all, the January 6 Committee was empaneled for the specific purpose of turning President Trump into a criminal for supposedly aiding and abetting the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the Capitol.

But when this story resurfaced earlier this month, there was something new, too. For one thing, the scope of the investigation was almost unbelievable – it turns out those subpoenaed phone records consisted of a staggering 30 million lines of phone data.

And when the select committee’s investigation went nowhere, one of the members – GOP malcontent Adam Kinzinger of Illinois – informed the FBI about the phone data in December 2023 when it was becoming apparent that former President Trump was the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024.

More revelatory than the size of the phone records hauled in by the J6 Committee was the news that the FBI had gone after these same records – and possibly more – in an effort to target Trump and his conservative allies. Not only did the agency have its eyes on Trump, it also went after nine Republican members of Congress – eight senators and a stray congressman, in an obvious effort to sweep up accomplices in the coup that never was.

Whether the FBI obtained the same phone records as the J6 Committee is unclear. Kinzinger’s tip may have been moot, because an FBI memo released by Sen. Chuck Grassley shows that by September 2023, the agency had already “conducted preliminary … analysis” on the call data of several members of Congress, including Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn.

According to CNN, “the FBI, as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation, used court orders in 2023 to obtain the phone records of nine GOP lawmakers.” These were not actual phone calls or text messages, but rather information about who called or texted whom, and when.

Grassley posted the memo to his X account, with the message,

“This document shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into ‘election conspiracy.’ Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith’s elector case against Trump.”

He concluded, in all caps: “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

Which brings up the question, why did the story turn out to be a one-day wonder? Here, we have the discovery of a partisan investigation seeking to uncover dirt on fellow members of Congress (if the records did indeed start with the January 6 Committee), or at the very least a rogue element of the executive branch targeting political enemies in the legislative branch.

As Sen. Johnson said, “They’re casting this net, this fishing expedition against members of the Senate and the House. There is no predicate. There’s no reason for this other than a fishing expedition, which, again, should outrage and shock every American.”

There is that suggestion once more that we are witness to a political scandal (one of many in the Biden administration) that is among the worst in our history. Yet when you do a Google search for stories related to phone toll records being subpoenaed by either the J6 Committee or the FBI, virtually nothing comes up beyond Oct. 7, the day after Grassley released the memo.

A few news outlets reported in the following days that Kash Patel had fired agents involved in the Arctic Frost investigation. In addition, there were scattered reports on Sen. Hagerty questioning why Verizon released his phone records without informing him. Verizon told Fox News Digital: “Federal law requires companies like Verizon to respond to grand jury subpoenas. We received a valid subpoena and a court order to keep it confidential. We weren’t told why the information was requested or what the investigation was about.”

Grassley and Johnson followed up with their own letter to Verizon and three other telecommunication companies demanding to be supplied with the same data that was provided to the FBI or Special Counsel Jack Smith. In addition, the senators expressed their belief that the records should have been privileged because they concerned the official constitutional duties of certifying the 2020 presidential election.

It seems like a real story – one that deserves the full attention of the press – but where are the special investigation teams at the New York Times and the Washington Post? What have you heard about this story on CBS, NBC, and ABC newscasts? Very little if anything. Certainly nothing in comparison to the coverage provided to Watergate.

Most recently, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Smith demanding a transcribed interview and documents and communications related to the special counsel’s investigation of Trump. Well and good, but that interview will be conducted in secret, as were the interviews of Smith’s subordinates – one of whom, according to Jordan, “invoked the Fifth Amendment approximately 75 times.”

It is well past time for the Republican Congress to fulfill its promise to hold accountable those who weaponized the federal government against Trump and his allies. Press releases and secret interviews won’t do the job. We need public televised hearings, with witnesses ranging from members of the J6 Committee like Kinzinger, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and now-Sen. Adam Schiff to former FBI director Chris Wray and former Special Counsel Smith.

Would the legacy media networks cover it? Probably not, because as we all know by now, those outfits are still after Trump’s scalp, and they will only seek to discredit Jordan and the other congressional investigators who want to know the truth. But that doesn’t mean Republicans should give up.

Watergate started as a one-day story about a botched break-in. But even without Woodward and Bernstein, the famous team of reporters from the Washington Post, the story would never have been kept quiet unless Democrat senators and congressmen didn’t do their job.

Now it’s time for Jordan, Grassley, and Patel to do theirs.