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Malaysia’s navy is preparing to take delivery of a warship fully equipped for anti-submarine, anti-air and electronic warfare – everything, that is, except a way to sink an enemy ship. After nearly a decade of delays, financial scandal and shipyard mismanagement the Royal Malaysian Navy’s first littoral combat ship is finally due in December. But it will arrive missing any anti-ship missiles. Norw...
Malaysia’s navy is preparing to take delivery of a warship fully equipped for anti-submarine, anti-air and electronic warfare – everything, that is, except a way to sink an enemy ship. After nearly a decade of delays, financial scandal and shipyard mismanagement the Royal Malaysian Navy’s first littoral combat ship is finally due in December. But it will arrive missing any anti-ship missiles. Norw...
China is an existential threat to the United States, and Washington needs to slow Chinese momentum and accelerate US technological advances, or fall well behind the Asian giant, witnesses told lawmakers at a Congressional round table on Tuesday. Among the possible strategies needed to counter Beijing’s growing prowess, analysts said, included expanding the Silicon Shield – an attempt to remove Chi...
Hong Kong health authorities have made an urgent appeal for a heart transplant for a six-month-old boy in a critical condition, saying the Hospital Authority will also seek assistance from mainland China soon. An authority spokesman said on Tuesday evening that six-month-old Rufus, who suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy and is in the paediatric intensive care unit at Hong Kong Children’s Hospital...
There will be no turning back the clock if the US House has its way. The House passed a bill on Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent. Proponents, including the White House, argued the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active. The vote was 308-117. Daylight saving time is that period between spring and fall when clocks in most parts of the...
A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the third of our series on the anniversary, Laura Zhou looks at why the gap between international law and geopolitical reality on the water has never been wider. On a scorching morning this summer, more than a hundred Chinese to...
Huddled in a room around a big screen, dozens of Boko Haram members listened intently as external consultants, whom they called “the white guys”, coached them on how to use leading artificial intelligence chatbots with laptops pre-installed with VPNs and encryption software. The workshop was one of several training sessions delivered by specialised AI “trainers”, likely members of the vast Islamic...
Connectivity can be an ambiguous term. Different states use it in different ways at different times. In Southeast Asia, as in other regions where regional diplomacy exists in the backdrop of ever-stronger great power disputes, connectivity lies in the conflux of economics, trade necessities and the unyielding pressure of geopolitics. In few countries is this more evident than in Cambodia, where in...
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold on Tuesday for US$50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil bought at auction, after a 10-minute battle between seven bidders. “Gus” is one of the world’s most complete T. rex skeletons – with 183 fossilised bones – and was discovered on a cattle ranch in South Dakota in 2021. The giant beast lived some 72 t...
American chipmaker Nvidia has shipped “very few” H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to mainland China and Hong Kong, a top Trump administration official told lawmakers on Tuesday, marking the first deliveries since the United States approved such sales. US President Donald Trump cleared the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China in December, with the Commerce Department approving around 10 Chin...
US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told lawmakers Tuesday that a sharp increase in threats targeting her and other justices is increasingly encroaching on their personal and family lives. During a rare appearance by justices before Congress, Barrett said she had to take a bulletproof vest home a few years ago, something she struggled to explain to her 12-year-old son. “I didn’t expect that...
Warren Buffett has stopped donating to the Gates Foundation, ending a two-decade philanthropic partnership following revelations about interactions between Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Buffett said on Tuesday that he was donating about US$6 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock, comprising 12 million Class B shares, in his annual midye...
British counterterrorism police said on Tuesday that former government minister Ann Widdecombe, who was found murdered at her home last week, was clearly targeted, adding that officers were still working to establish the motive. “It is clear that this was a targeted attack. We are still working to understand the extent of any planning or preparation and the motivation that sits behind that atta...
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has ordered its officers to suspend most vehicle stops around the country, after agents fatally shot two men six days apart during traffic stops in Texas and Maine, officials said on Tuesday. The shift in arrest tactics, which President Donald Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan called a “temporary pause” in vehicle stops, was implemented one day after ...
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday suspended vehicle stops related to immigration enforcement, two sources briefed on the matter said, after agents fatally shot two men six days apart during stops in Texas and Maine. The policy shift came one day after an ICE officer killed a driver in the coastal Maine town of Biddeford, about 24km (15 miles) south of Portland. The US Department of...
Writer E. Jean Carroll has collected over US$5.6 million that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against US President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said. The payment – representing the US$5 million jury award, plus interest – was made Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Ro...
Writer E. Jean Carroll has collected over US$5.6 million that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against US President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said. The payment – representing the US$5 million jury award, plus interest – was made Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Ro...
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday abandoned plans to impose a 20 per cent charge on commercial cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, less than a day after unveiling the proposal, while pressing ahead with a naval blockade targeting Iranian trade. Trump said the proposed fee would be replaced by trade and investment agreements with Gulf states following discussions with regional leaders. “...
Singapore’s Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said on Tuesday they would donate to charity the damages awarded to them in their defamation suit against Bloomberg. In separate social media posts published on Tuesday night, hours after the High Court delivered its judgment, the ministers reiterated that the lawsuit was about protecting their integrity and ...
Hong Kong police have arrested a 21-year-old student and a jobless 19-year-old on suspicion of deliberately causing more than 120 traffic accidents across the city in “crash-for-cash” scams, racking up more than HK$1 million (US$127,570) in fraudulent compensation. Chief Inspector Tam Tsz-wai of the New Territories North regional crime unit said officers suspected the pair were linked to 123 stage...
US consumer inflation slowed more than expected in June as energy prices retreated, but the moderation was insufficient to convince financial markets to take an interest-rate increase from the Federal Reserve this year off the table against the backdrop of renewed conflict in the Middle East. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the Labour Department on Tuesday also showed underlying inflation subs...
China’s successful recovery of a reusable rocket has sparked debate among aerospace experts over whether its unconventional approach could actually cut the cost of reaching space. On Friday, the country’s Long March-10B became the first orbital-class rocket outside the United States to return to Earth and be recovered intact. The rocket’s first-stage booster deployed four hooks as it descended and...
Thousands of Indonesian free meals kitchens complained on Tuesday they had been left in the lurch by the government’s move to scale down President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship free meals programme to save money. Jakarta is considering a potential budget cut of more than US$2 billion with reductions in the number of beneficiaries and kitchen operators. There are currently nearly 28,000 kitchens ...
Five traffic accidents have occurred along a new overpass on Tsuen Wan Road within the first three days of its operation, with Hong Kong transport authorities saying additional signage has been installed to remind motorists of the traffic arrangements. Three of the incidents occurred within 15 minutes of each other on Tuesday morning, involving a total of eight vehicles and leaving one person inju...
Louis Vuitton is set to face off against China’s trademark regulator in a Chinese intellectual property court on Thursday, as the French luxury brand deals with public backlash in China over a separate legal battle against a local milk tea brand. Louis Vuitton Malletier filed the administrative lawsuit against the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), with a Chinese individu...
Deaths in Germany spiked 32 per cent during a record heatwave in June compared to levels in the previous four years, official data showed Tuesday. Nationwide, about 23,900 people died between June 22 and June 28 – an increase of 7,100 compared with the two previous weeks, according to Germany’s statistics agency. “The fact that the health impact from heat is high and that death rates rise as a res...
Hong Kong booksellers are just hoping to match last year’s business levels for the 2026 edition of the city’s annual book fair, with some vendors expressing little optimism during a period of prolonged downturn for the publishing and retail sectors. The seven-day Hong Kong Book Fair, which runs in tandem with the Sports and Leisure Expo and the World of Snacks, opens on Wednesday at the Convention...
A Norwegian chemical tanker was hit by an explosion caused by an unidentified device off the Omani coast early Tuesday, a crisis response company said. MTI Network said in a statement that shipping company Stolt Tankers reported that at approximately 12.40am local time “its tanker vessel Stolt Magnesium while on passage in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman suffered from an explosion of an unid...
The European Union is prepared to introduce emergency measures to combat China’s extraordinary export surge as new figures showed the trade gap had widened dramatically, its top trade enforcer said on Tuesday. Safeguard measures that permit tariffs and quotas to be enforced to combat sudden import surges may “become legitimate on a case-by-case basis”, Denis Redonnet told the European Parliament’s...
The European Union is prepared to introduce emergency measures to combat China’s extraordinary export surge as new figures showed the trade gap had widened dramatically, its top trade enforcer said on Tuesday. Safeguard measures that permit tariffs and quotas to be enforced to combat sudden import surges may “become legitimate on a case-by-case basis”, Denis Redonnet told the European Parliament’s...
