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US President Donald Trump secretly flew out of Turkey last month on a smaller plane than previously known due to an assassination threat from Iran, The Washington Post reported on Monday. According to an anonymous US official who spoke to the Post, Trump boarded an Air Force One jet in Ankara on July 8, but then moved into a catering container attached to the plane. The container then ferried him ...
The South China Morning Post has signed three memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in Kuala Lumpur aimed at deepening regional cooperation and serving as a bridge between Hong Kong, Malaysia and the wider Asean region. SCMP publisher Tammy Tam on Tuesday signed the MOUs with the Southeast Asian Futures Initiative Centre (SEAFIC), a leading think tank; Star Media Group Berhad, publisher of Malaysia’...
US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby avoided naming Beijing or addressing escalating tensions in the South China Sea during a speech in Manila on Monday, adopting a measured tone weeks before an expected meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Despite speaking in the capital of Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia, Colby made no direct referenc...
Yoon Jin-woo had never gone to Seoul World Cup Stadium to watch FC Seoul, the city’s team and the club that calls South Korean football’s symbolic home its own. But on Sunday night, he made the pilgrimage from the suburbs of Gimpo to see Manchester City and Atletico Madrid, two European clubs whose pull in South Korea rivals, and often overwhelms, interest in the domestic game. The 21-year-old and...
Hang Seng Indexes Company plans to expand the Hang Seng Tech Index (HSTECH) to 50 constituents and introduce “sales growth” as a selection criterion to strengthen market representation, according to a consultation paper released on Monday. Hong Kong’s major stock index compiler proposed increasing the number of HSTECH constituents from 30 to 50, using a dual-selection framework. The top 40 stocks ...
China’s rapidly expanding aircraft carrier fleet may be vulnerable to attack from submarines – an area where its defensive capacity lags behind that of the United States – according to a new report. This gap is drawing increasing attention as Beijing builds more sophisticated carriers and sends them deeper into the western Pacific, where the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)’s knowledge of the ...
A father in northwestern China embraced a challenge posed by his teenage daughter during a heated argument and ultimately earned a spot in an MBA programme. Zhang Zhiqiang, 44, living in Xian, Shaanxi province, works in the health and wellness industry, as reported by mainland media outlet Dawan News. Having graduated from university two decades ago, Zhang typically spends up to 300 days a year tr...
When S* enrolled at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed Malaysia) in the Southeast Asian nation, the British-born Pakistani student believed the five-year medical degree would give him a realistic route into Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). The pathway was never formally guaranteed, but S said NUMed had highlighted a decade-long record in which students who applied for the UK Fou...
Despite representing nearly half the world’s population, accounting for about a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product and covering more than 60 per cent of the Eurasian land mass, the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the international arena remains relatively limited. While the SCO has long been a priority in China’s neighbourhood diplomacy, the grouping also serves as a pl...
A former Hong Kong justice minister who now heads an intergovernmental mediation body based in the city has said the organisation is ready to handle state-to-state disputes, with six countries having nominated more than 100 mediators from the legal, diplomatic and academic fields. Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, secretary general of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed), told the South China...
A former Hong Kong justice minister who now heads an intergovernmental mediation body based in the city has said the organisation is ready to handle state-to-state disputes, with six countries having nominated more than 100 mediators from the legal, diplomatic and academic fields. Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, secretary general of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed), told the South China...
China’s civil aviation authority has dialled up its safety-focused communications with some foreign carriers from Southeast Asia in recent months to enhance ties, communication and oversight. An aviation analyst said the move was made in light of changing operational practices, adding that air travel in the country remained safe. In one recent interaction, the Civil Aviation Administration of Chin...
South Korea may have been steadfast in its support for Ukraine against Russian and North Korean forces, but Kyiv’s request for air defence systems could prove to be a step too far for Seoul to accept. In addition to South Korea’s legal and policy limits on arms transfers to countries at war and its own defence needs, providing such weapons to Ukraine could further strain its ties with Russia, acco...
“He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man,” former Chinese leader Mao Zedong wrote in a poem while passing through the Liupan Mountains in Guyuan, Gansu, during the Long March of the Red Army in October, 1935. The Great Wall he mentioned refers to the Qin Great Wall built during the Warring States period of Qin (325-251 BC), which has a history dating back 2,300 years. It is one o...
Hong Kong’s commercial property investment more than doubled to US$3.1 billion in the second quarter, making it the fastest growing investment market in Asia-Pacific thanks to a strong increase in retail and office deals and a low base effect, according to JLL. The 129 per cent growth from a year earlier beat other top-performing markets including Singapore with 108 per cent growth and Australia w...
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood vaccines should be spaced out into separate medical visits. The order advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different single-disease shots and administering all childhood immunisa...
US President Donald Trump has extended for 90 days a waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to transport oil and other commodities between US ports but imposed new limits after shipbuilders and their allies in Congress argued the policy was undermining the domestic maritime industry, the White House said. The extension, finalised on Monday, comes as the war with Iran disrupts global crude flows an...
China has asked to join World Trade Organization consultations that Brazil opened against US tariffs of up to 37.5 per cent. Beijing filed the request in Geneva on Monday, telling the trade body it held a substantial commercial interest in the case. The move was first reported by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo and independently confirmed to the South China Morning Post by a Brazilian go...
When Francois Morin, China director at the World Nuclear Association – a leading international industry body – took a group of foreign nuclear engineers to a Shanghai Electric plant last year, the scale of production caught them off guard. Heavy machinery, from steam generators to reactor cores, was already assembled and ready for shipment to sites where construction had not even begun. The equipm...
A Chinese citizen faces up to 20 years in US federal prison after pleading guilty on Monday to attempting to purchase US-made military equipment to export to China, in violation of US arms export controls, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Chen Dingwei, 29, was charged with attempting to purchase military-grade satellite modems and radios manufactured for the US military by US compa...
The Trump administration is on pace to revoke a record number of visas this year, the State Department said on Monday, as it disclosed that more than 175,000 had been revoked since US President Donald Trump returned to office. The visas were revoked from foreign nationals who “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against US citizens, defrauded Americans, abused ...
US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, was sworn in Monday as attorney general after a bruising confirmation fight that exposed bipartisan concerns about the Justice Department’s direction under the Republican president. Another former Trump lawyer – Emil Bove, now a federal appeal court judge – administered the oath of office to Blanche at the White House following earl...
A US judge on Monday dismissed criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, after the Justice Department said it had decided to abandon the fraud and bribery case. Brooklyn-based US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis’ decision to grant federal prosecutors’ rare bid to toss the case came after he inquired into their reasons for doing so, including by asking Adani whether anything was pr...
Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer questioned her psychiatrist’s expertise, prescribing decisions and overall treatment as the defence sought on Monday to suggest that the mental healthcare system overlooked and even accelerated the Massachusetts mother’s decline in the months before she killed her three young children. In questioning Dr Jennifer Tufts, defence lawyer Kevin Reddington highlighted her use of ...
A US appeal court on Monday allowed thousands of lawsuits to move forward against Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, ByteDance’s TikTok, and other social media companies over claims they designed their products to be addictive to young users. The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the companies’ bid to reverse a lower court’s ruling forcing them to face some 2,400 laws...
US President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Iran compensate the victims of attacks, conflicts and domestic repression he blamed on Tehran, adding a new condition to negotiations over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The demand came after Iran reiterated that Washington must compensate it for damage caused by more than five months of US and Israeli strikes before the strategic waterway can be ...
A group of US investment giants are partnering with Nvidia on US$500 billion in funding for AI infrastructure projects, the Financial Times reported. Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR are among the firms in talks with Nvidia on a deal to invest in the AI buildout, the Financial Times reported, citing...
Russia’s Supreme Court barred the liberal Yabloko party on Monday from contesting September’s parliamentary elections, sidelining the only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine. More than four years after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the decision highlights the authorities’ intolerance of anti-war views and further narrows the already limited space for dissent in ...
Some 71.3 per cent of England is in drought, the UK government said on Monday, after the nation experienced its driest July on record, with a fifth heatwave and scant rain forecast for the week ahead. Parks and fields that are usually green at this point in the year were parched and yellow, according to Agence France-Presse photos, as river levels dwindled and farmers battling low crop yields warn...
China has suffered a rare failure of one of its newer-generation Long March rockets, losing a communications satellite after the launcher exploded shortly after take-off on Monday night. Around 8pm Beijing time, the unmanned 60-metre (197-foot) Long March 7A blasted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the southern island of Hainan, piercing the night sky as it carried the ChinaSat-4B satell...
