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China’s factory-gate price growth accelerated in August, while consumer inflation picked up again, amid volatile energy and commodity costs linked to the US-Israel war on Iran. The producer price index rose 3.8 per cent year on year last month, up from 3.5 per cent in July, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday. The reading beat a 3.6 per cent projectio...
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday it had captured a US uncrewed submarine at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, offering a rare glimpse into how underwater drones are being used in military operations. Iranian state media said the vessel was a Dive-LD, a large autonomous underwater vehicle built by California defence firm Anduril. The 5.8-metre (19-foot) submersible can carry out mis...
Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive who oversaw the city’s 1997 return to Chinese rule, has died. According to a statement from his office issued in the early hours on Wednesday, he died on Tuesday at the age of 89, surrounded by his loved ones. It is understood that he died at the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. Tung was also a vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body, t...
Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive who oversaw the city’s 1997 return to Chinese rule, has died. According to a statement from his office issued in the early hours on Wednesday, he died on Tuesday at the age of 89, surrounded by his loved ones. It is understood that he died at the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. Tung was also a vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body, t...
Sohar International Bank, Oman’s second-largest bank by total assets, will open a local representative office in Hong Kong this week, according to sources, underlining the city’s role as a stable financial hub amid Middle East conflicts. CEO Abdulwahid Mohamed Al Murshidi will visit Hong Kong for the office’s opening ceremony on Thursday morning, according to a source, who requested anonymity as t...
When you are denied a pay rise, when you feel anxious about your children’s education, or when you are alienated by colleagues, Chairman Mao can help. At least, that is what China’s online influencers and their hundreds of thousands of followers believe. Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China. Chinese authorities have not ...
Argentine President Javier Milei has every right to reassert his country’s territorial claims over the Falkland Islands. His proposal to use the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration as a template for resolving the Falkland Islands dispute merits serious consideration as a pragmatic framework for bringing this long-standing territorial conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Argentina’s claim to what its...
A pair of Chinese sisters, aged 20 and 15, have exposed a decade-long affair between their father, a former professor at the prestigious Wuhan University, and his student, who is now a professor at the same institution. Recently, they published an 86-page exposé of this affair online, sparking heated discussions across social media platforms. The sisters are targeting their father, Fu Lei, a 47-ye...
Some Hong Kong employment and travel companies have warned that air traffic in Jakarta could continue to face disruptions even after the Indonesian capital’s international airport reopened following a volcanic eruption that spewed ash into the sky, as airlines work through a backlog. GLC (Manado) Employment Service founder and director Chu Shek-yin told the South China Morning Post that he would n...
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday escalated his trade war against Canada, banning imports of alcohol and various products and raising tariffs on others, with the conflict showing no sign of abating. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood firm, acknowledging that reducing economic ties with the United States would come at a cost but saying the benefits would outweigh the pain. A range of Cana...
The US is banning dairy products, most alcoholic drinks and motorcycles from Canada, the White House said on Tuesday, as the trade war between the two neighbours and long-time allies escalates. The ban will take effect in three weeks and comes after Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on US$20 billion in US imports earlier on Tuesday. A range of Canadian products from mattresses to motorboats and g...
By 2045, Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF) could shrink to 130,000 personnel – nearly half today’s strength. But Tokyo has already ruled out one think tank’s controversial fix: recruiting foreign nationals. The proposal formed part of a report written by a panel of senior former defence bureaucrats and military chiefs, released by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation on September 2. It attracted widespre...
The Trump administration on Tuesday blasted Ford Motor’s business partnerships with Chinese companies, saying they posed national security concerns. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a letter to Ford CEO Jim Farley sent on Tuesday said the carmaker’s dealings with Chinese battery maker CATL and Chinese carmakers Geely and BYD raised “profound concern”. He urged Ford to cut ties with major...
The risk of a conflict over Taiwan is shaping Japanese defence planning, with Tokyo shoring up security at home and abroad for a potentially prolonged fight. But there are economic, demographic and political constraints on how far its military transformation can go. In the second of a three-part series, Gabriel Dominguez examines how Tokyo is building military resilience within its territory. Japa...
Police in Albania blocked protesters from reaching parliament on Tuesday as the latest rally against a luxury development linked to US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, turned violent The march was staged as parliament resumed from a summer recess and after the demonstrations marked their 100th day on Monday. They challenged a police cordon in the centre of the capital, Tirana, p...
The US military said it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday in response to the latest attacks on its warships and Tehran hit back at American targets in Jordan, the latest burst of back-and-forth strikes that have lurched the sides back towards open hostilities in a more than six-month-old war. Following the American strikes, Iran launched missiles towards US targets in Jordan, Iranian s...
The US military said it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday in response to the latest attacks on its warships and Tehran hit back at American targets in Jordan, the latest burst of back-and-forth strikes that have lurched the sides back towards open hostilities in a more than six-month-old war. Following the American strikes, Iran launched missiles towards US targets in Jordan, Iranian s...
Iran has launched missiles towards US targets in Jordan, Iranian state-run media said, following the latest American strikes. It is the latest tit-for-tat retaliation after the US military said it destroyed five Iranian crude oil tankers following two attacks on a US warship by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over the past two days. US Central Command, when asked about the strikes on the Jordanian airb...
Iran has launched missiles towards US targets in Jordan, Iranian state-run media said, following the latest American strikes. It is the latest tit-for-tat retaliation after the US military said it destroyed five Iranian crude oil tankers following two attacks on a US warship by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over the past two days. US Central Command, when asked about the strikes on the Jordanian airb...
The US on Tuesday struck multiple Iranian tankers in response to more attempted missile attacks on a Navy warship, according to a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. Iranian state television also is reporting that US forces attacked Iranian oil tankers near the southern port of Jask and near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. The latest tit-for...
Nicaragua has granted a Chinese-owned company linked to one sanctioned by Washington the right to prospect and dig for gold across 262 sq km (101 sq miles) of rainforest, about a quarter the size of Hong Kong. The 25-year concession over the block, named Jade, went to Linze Excelente Mineria, a company that appeared in Nicaragua’s mining registry only last year. The block is in a corner of the cou...
When US President Donald Trump announced on August 28 that the United States had secured majority control over some 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil through a private company, the North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), he called it “the biggest oil deal in history”. The White House fact sheet provided the details: NABEP’s 100-year concessions on 17 oilfields with 65 billion barrels of pr...
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that China “can never get ahead” of America in artificial intelligence, in part due to its “central planning”, as three government agencies accused Beijing of maliciously copying technology from its leading firms. “The technical word for stealing and copying American AI models is distillation. So, the Chinese distil our models and they can never get ahea...
The US government on Tuesday accused Chinese artificial intelligence companies of maliciously copying technology from American AI firms, potentially complicating relations ahead of a planned meeting between leaders of the world’s two biggest economies later this month. The Chinese companies copied US AI labs’ intellectual property through a technique known as distillation, according to a stateme...
The White House on Tuesday pulled a Tetris-style game called Build the Wall from its new online arcade, four days after a warning by the classic game maker that it takes copyright infringement seriously. The block-stacking game, subtitled “Zombie Border Siege”, told players to “protect the border from the coming horde”. It was no longer available on whitehouse.gov/arcade on Tuesday. The White Hous...
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Colombia on Tuesday to meet President Abelardo de la Espriella, sign agreements on critical minerals and civil nuclear cooperation and take up the country’s ties to China, in the first visit by a cabinet-level US official since the Colombian leader took office a month ago. Colombia’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Chi...
Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday discussed the Ukraine conflict in an “extremely frank” and constructive hour-long phone call, the Kremlin said. It came after US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv over the weekend in an attempt to kick-start long-stalled US efforts to end the fighting. Washington has been pushing for fresh...
Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies went on trial on Tuesday in Brooklyn, New York, on criminal charges after eight years of legal wrangling with the US government. The Shenzhen-based company has pleaded not guilty to all 14 counts, including bank fraud, wire fraud, trade secret theft, and racketeering, with the alleged criminal activity dating back to 1999. Jury selection began on Tuesday, loc...
A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to teaming up with friends to steal nearly a quarter-billion dollars in bitcoin from a Washington resident – one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in US history – and then embarking on a wild spending spree with the laundered proceeds. Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout who came to the US from Singapore, faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years af...
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday the release of tens of thousands of documents showing the city did not disclose all it knew about air toxicity after 9/11. The release comes ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed 2,977 people in the United States, mostly in the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. In the years since, more than 9,400 have ...
