Colonel Zhai Zhigang, the first Chinese man on the moon.

“Good evening. Paris entered its third consecutive week of martial law today as President Le Pen attempted to restore order across France in response to the ongoing economic crisis and trade disputes with her neighbours. A summit with English prime minister Boris Johnson broke up without progress, as neither country was willing to unilaterally lower the large tariffs on imported products which now dominate the former European single market. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel, laying a wreath at the tomb of assassinated President Hollande, who was murdered in the panic of 2013, expressed regret at the European unemployment rate of 30%, and blamed the decision of European governments to dismantle the eurozone in 2012 as being the catalyst for the collapse of free trade across Europe. She said there was some truth to the Beijing People’s Daily’s description of Europe as “an economic backwater”.

In Dublin, the Taoiseach has resigned following her decision to deploy British troops to assist the overwhelmed Irish security forces, following weeks of rioting across urban areas in the country. In her resignation speech, the Sinn Fein leader called the thousands of businesspeople who have fled the highest income tax rates in Europe “Traitors who should be delighted to pay taxes to their country”. Last week , twelve people died in a pitched battle with police and soldiers which resulted in the Irish Parliament being burnt down.

In the United States, President Perry announced that the US Border Patrol would soon have powers to detain pregnant women from seeking abortions in Canada, following the sharp increase in cross-border abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe Vs. Wade. The president also received a gift of the US flag that Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin placed on the Moon in 1969 from Chinese President Hu. The flag had been recovered by China’s astronauts when they had placed a large Chinese flag on the lunar surface in December 2020. President Hu also announced that China intends to land a man on Mars by 2025.

Finnish Police today arrested over one hundred protestors demonstrating against the presence of Russian troops in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The president of Lithuania has stressed that with the collapse of both NATO and the EU, it was important for small countries to be respectful towards the dominant power in the region, and that Russian troops were present as a sign of good faith. The president refused to comment on Russia’s ongoing military occupation of Ukraine, other than to say that it was “an internal Russian affair”.

Prime Minister Johnson has suggested that Chinese requests for ministerial representation at the British cabinet, given the size of Chinese investment in the UK and Chinese loans to the UK government, were being “looked at” by the attorney general. He expressed satisfaction that British ministers were no longer being asked to consider amending or rejecting draft regulations drawn up in Brussels. That’s the news tonight. Good night.”

Repeat.