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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 ...
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 September 11. The release comes ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks in 2001 that killed 2,977 people, in the US, mostly in the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. More than 9,400 have died from illnesses linked to thei...
The US on Tuesday issued 36 fresh Iran-related sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector and other companies as part of a broad push to escalate economic pressure on Tehran as the war in the Middle East entered a seventh month. The US Treasury Department said the action was aimed at grounding Iran’s Mahan Air, already sanctioned by the US and the European Union, and all other Iranian airlines. T...
Tung Chee-hwa, who served as Hong Kong’s first chief executive and oversaw the 1997 return of the city to Chinese rule, has died. The former vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), died on Tuesday at the age of 89, according to a statement from his office issued in the early hours on Wednesday. “Mr Tung Chee-hwa was a ma...
Tung Chee-hwa, who served as Hong Kong’s first chief executive and oversaw the 1997 return of the city to Chinese rule, has died. The former vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), died on Tuesday at the age of 89, according to a statement from his office issued in the early hours on Wednesday. He was last seen in public...
Singapore remains open to considering chemical castration as a measure to tackle sex crimes if there is clear evidence that it is effective in reducing crime, Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam has said. However, the evidence so far was inconclusive, he said in a written parliamentary reply on Tuesday. “We remain open to considering measures including pharmacological anti-androgen treatments, also ...
The world’s most endangered tigers have started a family in Greece, offering hope for a predator rapidly vanishing from the wild. Three two-month-old Sumatran tiger cubs received identification microchips and their first vaccinations on Tuesday at a zoo near Athens, as part of a global effort to build a backup population. The Sumatran tiger, classified as critically endangered, is found only on th...
Hong Kong secondary school students’ performance has fallen in an international assessment focused on three core subjects, with their science score dropping out of the global top 10 for the first time in the study’s history. Experts said on Tuesday that the decline in Hong Kong scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) was partly due to the post-Covid impact on study habi...
President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for deeper cooperation between “major technological powers” China and the UK as he held his first official call with new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Xi congratulated Burnham on his appointment as the country’s leader, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, emphasising that the shared interests of China and the United Kingdom outweighed their ...
President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for deeper cooperation between “major technological powers” China and the UK as he held his first official call with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Xi congratulated Burnham on his appointment as prime minister, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, emphasising that the shared interests of China and the United Kingdom outweighed their differences in soc...
South Korea said on Tuesday it had sent a fact-finding team to assess the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, stressing no decision had been made about potential troop deployment to the strategic waterway. Traffic through the vital shipping route has been virtually paralysed since the US-Iran war began on February 28, disrupting global energy markets. The South Korean defence ministry said it had “...
Pakistan has unveiled a newly acquired Chinese-made short-range air defence system that analysts say could boost its ability to counter Indian drones and low-altitude threats in a future conflict. A social media video posted by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) on Sunday confirmed for the first time that it was operating the HQ-17AE short-range air defence (Shorad) system. The HQ-17AE is an export vers...
Britain, France and Canada on Tuesday moved to block imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, while a wider group of Western countries signalled they may take further steps to defend the two-state solution amid mounting concern over settlement expansion and violence in the territory. The trade measures are the latest in a series of actions targeting Israel’s settlement policy an...
Britain has announced a trade ban on goods made in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in coordination with France and Canada, the latest sanctions to target Israel as it faces growing diplomatic isolation. British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband on Tuesday said London could no longer simply “call out” injustice and suffering, but told the House of Commons that the country now had to “act”...
As Tesla CEO Elon Musk touted the motor of his company’s Cybercab – which, he claims, contains no rare earth elements – debate has emerged over whether the technology could mark a meaningful shift in electric vehicle (EV) supply chains, or undercut one of China’s trump cards in its protracted trade conflict with the US. While the move has been viewed as an effort to reduce the EV industry’s relian...
For decades, the United States has used economic and financial restrictions as major foreign policy tools. But as China and other countries gain greater economic and technological strength, they are also acquiring more ways to push back against US actions, with deep-sea mining possibly becoming a testing ground for that shift. China could join other countries in taking coordinated countermeasures,...
Thai authorities arrested 12 South Koreans and a Chinese national accused of running a scam call centre from a high-end rented house south of Bangkok, police said on Tuesday. The alleged scammers “entered Thailand from a neighbouring country and were hiding in Samut Prakan province, renting a luxury house”, Thai police said in a statement, without naming the country. Cambodia and Myanmar, which bo...
Qatar on Tuesday vowed to prioritise China’s energy supply and safeguard shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, as both countries coordinated efforts to de-escalate Middle East tensions. During a meeting in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani stressed the importance of unimpeded maritime traffic through ...
When President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for his planned September 24 visit – his first state-level visit to Washington in more than a decade – artificial intelligence is expected to be near the top of the agenda. Both administrations are preparing for their first formal dialogue on AI. Washington has framed much of that conversation around the need for tighter controls on sensitive technol...
For one grandmother, it was when bullets began hitting the rooftops of her neighbourhood that she decided she would have to leave the housing development where she had lived for nearly 20 years. A sharp rise in fighting between gang factions in Ecuador has prompted thousands of families to flee and abandon their homes to the gangs, who strip the houses for drug money or use them to hide kidnappi...
Hong Kong’s first university-led wealth management academy was launched on Tuesday, as the city’s rapidly expanding private-wealth industry competes for professionals capable of serving increasingly sophisticated and international clients. The Wealth Management Academy, established by The University of Hong Kong Business School, aims to bring together policymakers, financial institutions and acade...
Taiwan’s opposition and tour operators have hit back at new registration rules for travellers heading to mainland China, with politicians accusing the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of trying to fan cross-strait fears ahead of local elections. Since September 1, travellers to the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau have been required to register details of their trip, including the purpose of their...
Copper prices have surged to an all-time high on the London Metal Exchange (LME) amid anticipations of potential US tariffs and a tightening supply crunch, with analysts expecting prices to remain elevated in the short term. Benchmark three-month copper futures closed at US$14,510 a tonne on Monday, after rising to a record high of US$14,533 a tonne earlier in the session, surpassing the previous ...
A cluster comprising Hong Kong and two mainland Chinese cities has been ranked the world’s top innovation hub for the second consecutive year by a United Nations body. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster retained its crown in the 2026 Global Innovation Index (GII) released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on Tuesday. Tokyo-Yokohama, San Jose-San Francisco, Seoul and Beij...
Hungary expelled 10 Russian diplomats on Tuesday, saying they had acted in ways incompatible with their diplomatic status, in a stark reminder that the pro-Russian years of former prime minister Viktor Orban are over. Russia’s foreign ministry said it would retaliate and its response would be painful for Hungary, local media reported. “The response to the Russophobic lobby in Budapest will be h...
China’s top court has issued new guidance on how judges should handle civil cases involving artificial intelligence, setting out rules on liability for deepfakes, voice cloning, hallucinations and violations of personal rights. Although Beijing has yet to pass a dedicated AI law, the guidelines expand the country’s legal framework governing the technology. The Supreme People’s Court’s 24-article o...
The eruption of Anak Krakatoa in Indonesia has tested the country’s disaster preparedness, disrupting nearly 3,000 flights carrying more than 340,000 passengers as volcanic ash spread across the region. Authorities say they are monitoring the volcano, which remains under the country’s second-highest alert status. According to scientists, the event’s exceptional scale makes its impact hard to antic...
