By Mail on Sunday Reporter

Published: 17:01 EDT, 23 September 2023 | Updated: 18:25 EDT, 23 September 2023

South Africa were important opponents in shaping the career of Paul O’Connell.

Specifically, the year 2009 was vital. It pitched the legendary lock into action against the Springboks four times. He led the Lions in three Tests against South Africa, including the ageless, brutal second match that clinched the series for South Africa.

It was a gruelling tour for the captain, who commanded widespread respect from coaches and players, but whose leadership was subjected to lingering focus from parts of the media once the series was lost.

Four months after that tour came one of the signal triumphs of his playing career in Ireland colours.

It was a night of freezing fog in Croke Park on Saturday, November 28 that year. And it was second only to the England game in 2007 as rugby’s greatest 80 minutes in the home of the GAA.

Ireland won the game 15-10, thanks to five penalties from Johnny Sexton; he was winning his second cap for his country.

But the game became famous for the extent of O’Connell’s preparation. It emerged afterwards that he had asked Gert Smal, the South African who was Ireland’s forwards’ coach at the time, to teach him to count to ten in Afrikaans. This helped him to decode the opposition line-out calls, and so the best set-piece in the world, led by the mighty Victor Matfield and captain John Smit, came apart.

You wonder late on Saturday night in Nantes, with the crowd now fully dissipated and management urging the Irish players to conclude their media chat and get on the bus home, if O’Connell misses being a player in a week like this one.

His response begins with a deep laugh.

‘No, not any more, not any more,’ he says. ‘I enjoy what I do. This is a different group. They’re kind of different to us, they do things differently so I enjoy where I am.

‘I try not to think about playing too much.’

Coaching is a consolation that allows him to pursue the standards that led him to captaining the Lions. And so given his meticulousness and the expectations created by the Andy Farrell regime generally, the line-out creakiness of recent Tests must have been a frustration.

It could have descended into a much more serious state if it hadn’t come right against Tonga, because it is an aspect of the game with a two-fold significance next Saturday.

Firstly, Ireland’s attacking game makes fruitful use of the line-out, both from mauls and as a way of starting wider attacks. And secondly, South Africa go after the opposition throw with frenzied relish. If there is any weakness, they’ll exploit it and Irish ambitions will be in a vulnerable state.

To see Ireland repair theirs as an attacking weapon in Nantes was important.

‘It was something the lads identified,’ explains O’Connell, ‘that Tonga stay down in a lot of their defence, and they hit you quite hard at the start, so we just transferred it.

‘And we had Bundee in there as well adding a little bit of weight to the maul. It’s always great.

‘It’s hard to score maul tries in international rugby. It’s a tricky thing to do. To be able to go to the corner and be able to grab one of those in a game is always excellent.

‘You’re building generally when you end up five meters from the line. It’s on the back of a penalty already. You’ve already created something, so to be able to go to the corner and score something is great.’

The presence of Aki was significant in the try scored by Caelan Doris on the night. It seems obvious to add such a powerful presence, but it’s also characteristic of the clever moves that have characterised Ireland’s attack.

‘Sometimes you don’t know exactly how it’s going to go, those little trick plays, but we drilled it well all week and it worked, so we’re happy enough with that,’ says James Ryan.

‘There was good variation as well. We had a couple of drives and peel, and obviously played off the top as well. It was good, so we’re happy enough with it.’

Ronan Kelleher was accomplished with his throwing, succeeding with 11 of 12, while Ireland’s overall return, with Rob Herring playing the second half, was 21 from 23.

‘We’ve just been working on a few little tweaks here and there,’ says Kelleher, who had an outstanding game in the loose as well. He must be in strong contention to start in the Stade de France, especially if there is any concern that Dan Sheehan is not ready to go from six weeks on the sideline to the incomparable challenge of taking on the Boks.

‘Not that we’ve been bad, but we’ve been really trying to focus on ourselves,’ he says. ‘Yeah, it was good to see that, all that work kind of pay off. The forwards did the job to make sure they were drilled each time. It made our job a lot easier as hookers.’

Then it’s suggested to Ryan that the entire challenge Ireland faces, in every facet of play, goes up this week. ‘We’re happy with that,’ he instantly replies.

South Africa are world champions, and an enormous obstacle.

But they are now peers for this Ireland generation. This is not a group that cowers before reputations, or that is stooped by history’s miserable burden.

They play and beat the best teams in the world, not because of luck or cosmic flukes, but because of talent, preparation and belief.

‘It was one of our better performances for a while,’ says Ryan. ‘I think it will give us confidence, but it’s a whole different level next week. We’ll get excited about it now as well.

‘The support tonight was just crazy, wasn’t it? Crazy stuff. The colour as well, walking around. I mean, the expectation and level of support next week is going to be unbelievable. So, we’ll get excited about that as well, but obviously we know it’s a huge step up.’

They are relishing the colour and noise inside the Stade de France. Unlike the past two weeks, when the only support for the opposition came from locals picking the underdogs, there will be a vast South African support.

Given the number of South African ex-pats living in the UK, expect two shades of green to flood the French capital.

‘Yeah it doesn’t get any better,’ smiles Ryan, quietly excellent on Saturday.

‘Well, maybe it does but it’s going to be hard to beat. The World Cup, in Paris, against the champions: it’s pretty cool alright.’

And you know and he knows how it could get better, but talk like that must wait. Saturday governs everything now.

It is the ultra-realistic tech sweeping social media – with ‘paparazzi’ pictures of celebrities often believed to be genuine.

Many people are shocked, and a little disturbed, to find out that images they think are real have in fact been made by a computer.

AI-generated images have exploded in recent months, whether it be celebrities reimagined as pensioners or entire exhibitions dedicated to computer-made artwork – much to the fury of human artists. 

But can you spot the difference between what’s real and what’s fake?

Take MailOnline’s quiz to see if you can tell which pictures are genuine and which are AI-generated… 

1. Donald Trump arrested 

2. Elon Musk dating rival motor company CEO

3. Supermodel Bella Hadid becomes a bald robot  

4.  Pope Francis opts for oversized puffer jacket

5. Britney Spears ‘s floating necklace  

6. Tom Cruise and his stunt doubles 

7. Rita Ora’s reptile face 

8. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks the runway 

9. Billionaire Elon Musk as a toddler

10. Former President Donald Trump’s mugshot 

Answers 

Which ones did you get right? 

1. This picture is fake! An AI-generated image of Donald Trump trying to run away while being arrested by police was posted on Twitter in March with the caption: ‘Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest.’

2. This picture is fake! This image of Tesla CEO Elon Musk walking hand in hand with Mary Barra, the CEO of rival car company General Motors, was generated by AI. After the image was posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, as a ‘breaking’ story, Musk replied saying he would ‘never wear that outfit’.

3. This picture is real! Supermodel Bella Hadid was transformed into a bald robot for a futuristic fashion campaign for designer Marc Jacobs. In this picture, Hadid poses nude and bald, wearing only a sculptural silver ear cuff with metal piping snaked around her. The fashion firm’s Heaven by Marc Jacobs Fall ’23 campaign was shot by Carlijn Jacobs and styled by Danielle Emerson.

4. This picture is fake! An image of Pope Francis donning a white puffer jacket instead of the usual robe circulated on social media, but though many people believed it to be real, it was in fact AI-generated. The viral image was created by Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old man from Chicago, using Midjourney – an artificial intelligence image generator. 

5. This picture is real! After posting a picture of herself, Britney Spears and Cade Hudson on Instagram, Paris Hilton had to refute theories that the image was fake. Fans were convinced of this as Britney’s necklace appeared to be floating with only one chain. In a follow-up comment ‘to all of those asking’, Paris said the picture was taken on iPhone making it look blurry and then edited on an app called Remini to correct that, but that sometimes the AI ‘distorts the images’. ‘Didn’t want to even dignify this with a response,’ she added. ‘But some of these conspiracy theories are absolutely ridiculous.’

6. This picture is fake! Despite being known for playing characters which carry out daring acts in action movies, this picture of Tom Cruise and his stunt doubles is an AI-generated image. Cruise does all of his own stunts.

7. This picture is real! Walking the red carpet for the 2022 British Fashion Awards, singer Rita Ora sported striking reptilian facial prosthetics that closely mirrored her skin tone, as well as bleached eyebrows.

8. This picture is fake! Many were surprised to see that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had made the move to catwalk modelling, but an image circulating on social media of the tech boss walking a runway kitted out in a glittery pink outfit was in fact AI-generated, using Midjourney image generator.

9. This picture is fake! An image of Elon Musk as a toddler wearing brown overalls made waves on social media but rather than being from the billionaire’s family archives, it was in fact AI-generated. The picture was captioned ‘Elon Musk was reportedly working on some anti-aging formula, but it got way out of hand’ which warranted a reply from Musk himself saying ‘Guys, I think I maybe took too much’.

10. This picture is real! Much to the shock of many on social media, the mugshot of Donald Trump released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office on August 24 was actually real. Trump was photographed for the police mugshot after his arrest.

Astronomers have discovered a new type of star – a ‘magnetic monster’ that will one day explode to become a rare ‘magnetar’. 

Called HD 45166, the star is rich in helium and located about 3,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros.  

But what makes it really special is it’s the only massive helium star astronomers have ever observed that has a magnetic field – and a powerful one at that. 

HD 45166 has such a strong magnetic field – 100,000 times stronger than Earth’s – that astronomers think it will become a magnetar when it explodes into a supernova in around 1 million years. 

Magnetars are compact and highly magnetic stellar remnants with some of the most intense magnetic fields in the universe that violently eject bursts of energy. 

Not much has been known about the origin of magnetars until now, but experts think HD 45166 finally sheds light on their origin. 

A new study detailing the findings, conducted by an international team of astronomers, has been published today in the journal Science.

‘For the first time, a strong magnetic field was discovered in a massive helium star,’ said author André-Nicolas Chené at NOIRLab, an astronomical research centre based in Tucson, Arizona. 

‘Our study suggests that this helium star will end its life as a magnetar.’

NASA describes magnetars as the ‘superheroes of the star world’ because they’re endowed with a colossal magnetic field strength that has baffled scientists for years. 

Magnetars are a type of neutron star – the collapsed cores of some massive stars that pack roughly the mass of our sun into a region the size of a city. 

In a typical neutron star, the magnetic field is trillions of times that of Earth’s magnetic field, but in a magnetar the magnetic field is another 1,000 times stronger.

Therefore, magnetars are a very special type of neutron star. 

However, astronomers don’t know exactly how magnetars form, how common they are or even how they produce such colossal magnetic fields. 

What’s more, magnetars are extremely small – just 10 to 12 miles (15 to 20 km) across – and so are too distant for even the best telescopes to see any details on their surfaces.

The team therefore made observations using an instrument on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope that can detect and measure magnetic fields. 

In particular, they turned their attention towards HD 45166, a star that’s been known about for over a century by astronomers.

The first observations of the star were made in 1922 and astronomer Carol Jane Anger noted in a 1933 publication that was ‘a first of its kind’. 

Lead author of the new study Tomer Shenar at the University of Amsterdam said he and colleagues suspected the star was ‘weird’, but didn’t think it could be a precursor of a magnetar. 

‘We didn’t know it would be the magnetic monster that it is at first,’ Professor Shenar told MailOnline.

‘Only at a later stage, the hypothesis that it might be magnetic arose and was later proven with the new data presented in our study.’ 

Observations revealed HD 45166 has an incredibly strong magnetic field of 43,000 gauss – a unit of measurement of magnetic induction, also known as Gs.  

This makes it the only massive helium star ever observed with a magnetic field, as well as the strongest magnetic field ever detected in a massive star.

Also, 43,000 gauss is almost 100,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field (which enables compasses to operate and birds to navigate). 

Intense winds of particles blowing away from HD 45166 are trapped by its magnetic field, enshrouding the star in a gaseous shell. 

The team strongly believe that HD 45166 will turn into a magnetar in around one million years’ time – relatively short in an astronomical time scale considering the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. 

For a star to become a magnetar, it needs to fulfill two conditions which the researchers think HD 45166 meets. 

Firstly, it needs to become a neutron star when it dies.

‘This is not a certainty, but it seems to be just about massive enough to undergo core-collapse into a neutron star and this is supported by our models,’ Professor Shenar told MailOnline. 

Secondly, it needs to have a sufficiently strong magnetic field – and the team definitely know that HD 45166 does. 

‘So, if it collapses to a neutron star, the field of the newly-born neutron star is bound to reach hundreds of trillions of gauss – the typical field of a magnetar, Professor Shenar told MailOnline.

According to the academic, HD 45166 has no known planets orbiting it and is ‘unlikely’ to have any yet to be undiscovered.

‘The star is about 100 million years old – that’s more or less the time it takes for planets to form – but we cannot rule it out,’ he told MailOnline. 

 1. Frank’s Cafe at Bold Tendencies, London, England

2. Azotea del Circulo, Madrid, Spain

3. The Roof at the Reykjavik Edition, Reykjavik, Iceland

4. Schweizerhof Flims, Flims, Switzerland

5. Oroya, Madrid, Spain

6. 16 Roof, Istanbul, Turkey

7. Sky Bar by Seen, Lisbon, Portugal

8. Patchwork at Sa Punta, Ibiza, Spain

9. Skyline Bar 20up, Hamburg, Germany

10. Mama Shelter, Bordeaux, France

11. Hotel Croce di Malta, Florence, Italy

12. Salling Rooftop and the Roof Garden, Aarhus, Denmark

13. A for Athens, Athens, Greece

14. Play Label Rooftop, Brussels, Belgium

15. Mas Rooftop Bar, Helsinki, Finland

16. TakeT, Gothenburg, Sweden

17. Seven Restaurant, Sicily, Italy

18. Restaurant Silo, Copenhagon, Denmark

19. Herbarijs, Riga, Latvia

20. Sercotel Rosellon, Barcelona, Spain

21. 20 Stories, Manchester, England

22. The Culpeper, London, England

23. Terraza Danieli, Venice, Italy

24. Sophie’s, Dublin, Ireland

25. Klunkerkranich Rooftop, Berlin, Germany

The average Briton might visit a handful of seaside resorts over two years – but one travel writer tasked herself with exploring a staggering 40 coastal towns in that space of time.

Revealing everything she discovered along the way, Madeleine Bunting documented her travels – which took place from 2020 to 2022 – in new book The Seaside: England’s Love Affair.

Speaking to MailOnline Travel, the author reflects on the experience, shedding light on the town that surprised her the most, the resort she found to be ‘stunning’ – and the town that left her feeling ‘bewildered’…

What inspired you to do this project?

Madeleine says: ‘I always love the seaside and when my sister told me that Scarborough had fallen on hard times, I remembered the glorious visits I made there on school trips in the late sixties. We all know seaside resorts have high levels of deprivation but I became curious…’ 

The author said she started to wonder about ‘how poor’ certain seaside towns had become and why they’d faced ‘such a long steady decline’. She also wanted to find out, she reveals, ‘which towns have managed to turn [their fortunes] around’. 

How did you choose which towns to visit?

‘Born in North Yorkshire, my childhood holidays were on that coast, so I had to start there,’ Madeleine reveals.

She continues: ‘Skegness was where my husband had his early childhood holidays and after that, I kept going round the coast anti-clockwise. Sadly, I couldn’t get everywhere and there are lots of towns I would have loved to have added in – Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft for example.’

Summing up her thoughts on the counties she toured, Madeleine says: ‘Essex was full of surprises, Kent was fascinating and I’ve always loved the Sussex coast. Because my focus was the big resorts, I didn’t cover Cornwall in-depth.’ She adds that ‘Blackpool and Morecambe made a very satisfying finale’ to her travels.

In each town, where did you stay and what did you do?

Madeleine says: ‘My aim was to sample every kind of accommodation so I stayed in hotels, holiday camps, hotels and Airbnbs.’

She continues: ‘In every resort, I swam and ate fish and chips, walked the promenade and talked to anyone who would talk to me. I had wonderful conversations with strangers who sometimes ended up telling me their life stories.’

How have seaside towns changed over the past century?

‘That’s a huge question – and the whole book is about that process of change,’ Madeleine says.

She reveals: ‘The odd thing is that [English resorts] probably have as many visitors as they did at their peak in the 1950s – 13million visit Blackpool annually – but they don’t stay for that traditional two-week holiday, which was the mainstay of the towns’ income.’ 

Have towns changed for the worse in any way?

Madeleine says that in some places, there are ‘pockets of deep deprivation with issues around substance abuse’ and ‘low life chances for those born in the town’ – both of which are ‘painful results of economic decline’.

Which is England’s best seaside town?

Madeleine reveals: ‘[This is] such a tough question because I enjoyed so many of them but I think Scarborough is stunning and full of intriguing reminders of its glamorous past.’ 

And the worst?

Madeleine says she can’t single out one seaside resort as the worst, but she admits that visiting Padstow in Cornwall ‘was a bewildering experience’. 

While there, she saw ‘a few streets packed with people who couldn’t get into the expensive restaurants, which are booked up in advance’. She also found that Padstow’s ‘crazy house prices’ mean that ‘locals no longer live in the town’. 

What’s so special about England’s relationship with seaside resorts?

‘We’re island people, nowhere is far from the sea,’ says Madeleine. 

She continues: ‘All of us have a special relationship with our many coastlines. Readers are now writing to me with their own biographies of where they went when… my aim was to prompt that, so I am delighted.’

Elaborating on this ‘special relationship’, the author notes that ‘we visit the coast at key moments – to scatter ashes, to get engaged, that type of thing’. 

Which town surprised you the most?

Madeleine says: ‘There were surprises everywhere: the Lincolnshire beaches are vast; Southend had crystal clear water; Margate’s charm; Folkestone’s stunning gardens; Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet; Morecambe’s Midland Hotel. 

‘The list just goes on and on; our coastline is hugely varied in its geology, architecture and history.’

Are there any resorts you predict will get a new lease of life in the future?

‘There is huge potential in many coastal towns with the right infrastructure of good public transport [and] digital links,’ says Madeleine. 

She continues: ‘Many of them have charming period housing which is relatively cheap; for families, they could offer a wonderful quality of life. Hybrid working can open up new possibilities.’

The author recalls: ‘I met a young Indian couple working in Scarborough; he was an engineer and she was a landscape architect. Professional, highly educated and loving North Yorkshire’s coast. They filled me with hope of a new dynamic future for these beautiful towns on our coastal edge.’ 

Are there any you predict will be lost to time?

The author says that there is ‘very little left of’ New Brighton in Merseyside ‘except a tea shop with lots of framed photos on the wall of its incredible history when ferries loaded with visitors crossed the Mersey for day trips’.

Can YOU spot the snow leopard? Master predator is nearly impossible to see in these images

• Snow leopard is pictured in China’s Sichuan Province in a remote area that hosts many endangered species 
• The photographer was also lucky enough to capture the magnificent creature devouring its prey 

By James Callery

Updated: 17:43 EDT, 8 August 2023

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1. Unnatural eye movement. Eye movements that do not look natural — or a lack of eye movement, such as an absence of blinking — are huge red flags. It’s challenging to replicate the act of blinking in a way that looks natural. It’s also challenging to replicate a real person’s eye movements. That’s because someone’s eyes usually follow the person they’re talking to.

2. Unnatural facial expressions. When something doesn’t look right about a face, it could signal facial morphing. This occurs when one image has been stitched over another.

3. Awkward facial-feature positioning. If someone’s face is pointing one way and their nose is pointing another way, you should be skeptical about the video’s authenticity.

4. A lack of emotion. You also can spot what is known as ‘facial morphing’ or image stitches if someone’s face doesn’t seem to exhibit the emotion that should go along with what they’re supposedly saying.

5. Awkward-looking body or posture. Another sign is if a person’s body shape doesn’t look natural, or there is awkward or inconsistent positioning of head and body. This may be one of the easier inconsistencies to spot, because deepfake technology usually focuses on facial features rather than the whole body.

6. Unnatural body movement or body shape. If someone looks distorted or off when they turn to the side or move their head, or their movements are jerky and disjointed from one frame to the next, you should suspect the video is fake.

7. Unnatural colouring. Abnormal skin tone, discoloration, weird lighting, and misplaced shadows are all signs that what you’re seeing is likely fake.

8. Hair that doesn’t look real. You won’t see frizzy or flyaway hair. Why? Fake images won’t be able to generate these individual characteristics.

9. Teeth that don’t look real. Algorithms may not be able to generate individual teeth, so an absence of outlines of individual teeth could be a clue.

10. Blurring or misalignment. If the edges of images are blurry or visuals are misalign — for example, where someone’s face and neck meet their body — you’ll know that something is amiss.

11. Inconsistent noise or audio. Deepfake creators usually spend more time on the video images rather than the audio. The result can be poor lip-syncing, robotic- sounding voices, strange word pronunciation, digital background noise, or even the absence of audio.

12. Images that look unnatural when slowed down. If you watch a video on a screen that’s larger than your smartphone or have video-editing software that can slow down a video’s playback, you can zoom in and examine images more closely. Zooming in on lips, for example, will help you see if they’re really talking or if it’s bad lip-syncing.

13. Hashtag discrepancies. There’s a cryptographic algorithm that helps video creators show that their videos are authentic. The algorithm is used to insert hashtags at certain places throughout a video. If the hashtags change, then you should suspect video manipulation.

14. Digital fingerprints. Blockchain technology can also create a digital fingerprint for videos. While not foolproof, this blockchain-based verification can help establish a video’s authenticity. Here’s how it works. When a video is created, the content is registered to a ledger that can’t be changed. This technology can help prove the authenticity of a video.

15. Reverse image searches. A search for an original image, or a reverse image search with the help of a computer, can unearth similar videos online to help determine if an image, audio, or video has been altered in any way. While reverse video search technology is not publicly available yet, investing in a tool like this could be helpful.

 

Even controversial leaders like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin were once innocent babies – and artificial intelligence has created images of them before becoming war-mongering dictators.

The young rulers were created by Midjourney, an AI-powered imaging software that churns out photos based on simple text prompts. 

The results shows each baby image sporting a suit and donning the tyrants’ iconic hairstyles. 

These images follow one of baby Elon Musk that made waves on the internet this month, showing the billionaire as a toddler with a white button-up shirt, brown overalls and signature haircut.

AI-generated images have taken over the internet in recent months, some sparking joy and others causing terror.

In March, a photo of Pope Francis donning a huge white puffer jacket immediately fooled the internet.

The image was outrageous enough to prompt Chrissy Teigen, 37, to address her 12.9 million Twitter followers.

The model and TV personality wrote: ‘I thought the pope’s puffer jacket was real and didn’t give it a second thought. No way am I surviving the future of technology.’

And in the same month, a gallery of snaps showing shocking scenes of Donald Trump being tackled to the ground by police officers.

This was around the same time the former president was due to be indicted over allegations he paid hush money to a porn star. However, the public knew something was off with the images.

While these were for entertainment, other AI-generated images, like one claiming an explosion occurred at the Pentagon last month, showed how the tech can have real world impact. That fake image sent stock markets crashing.

Midjourney, created by scientists in Silicon Valley, was made available last summer, allowing a host of people to get the AI to generate an image for any of their prompts. 

DailyMail.com asked Midjourney to create what world leaders would look like as babies after seeing a viral post on Instagram showing these same men reimagined by AI. 

Kim, Putin and Bashar al-Assad, who served as the 19th president of Syria since 2000, have been accused of human rights violations.

According to the US Department of State, Kim has tortured and unlawfully killed his people, used political prison camps, restricted religion and censored media and the internet.

‘Defectors and media also reported cases of infanticide and forced abortion, particularly involving mothers who were political prisoners, persons with disabilities, victims of rape by government officials or prison guards, or escapees forcibly repatriated from the People’s Republic of China (PRC),’ reads the report.

Putin is currently in the midst of a war of aggression against Ukraine after invading the sovereign country in February 2022.

In March, the International Criminal Court said it had issued a warrant for the Russian president, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children in Ukraine. 

Ukraine’s human rights chief, Dmytro Lubinets, has said that based on data from the country’s National Information Bureau, 16,226 children were deported. 

And Assad launched a sarin gas attack on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus in 2019, which killed at least 300 people.

Many of the victims were children who died in agony, gagging and suffocating as the gas caused muscle spasms that made breathing impossible.

China’s Xi Jinping was also reimagined as a baby by Midjourney.

He is a politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2012.

In 2018, Xi engineered a constitutional reform that eliminated the previous two-term limit on the Presidency, allowing him to stay in power without needing an election.

‘People in China cannot practice the religion or belief of their choice. They cannot express their opinions openly or form or join groups of their choosing without fear of harassment, arrest, or retribution. Members of minority groups are subject to arbitrary mass detention, Orwellian-style surveillance, political indoctrination, torture, forced abortions and sterilization, and state-sponsored forced labor,’ according to the US Department of State.