Live headlines from trusted global sources. Click any story to open it on the original website.
Cooperation between the United States and China is required to manage the unprecedented societal impacts of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Bill Gates wrote in a new essay published on Wednesday. The call to action comes as the billionaire philanthropist and tech titan warns that AI is ushering in “one of the most turbulent times in human history”, which could either bec...
The South China Morning Post has launched a major data project diving into President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-graft campaign. In the third part of a series accompanying the data project, William Zheng looks at the relationship between rich regional resources and corruption. Beneath the desolate Gobi Desert and sparsely populated mountains of China’s less developed regions lie abundant mineral r...
The Justice Department and the FBI said on Wednesday that they seized two Chinese state-sponsored online platforms that targeted US critical infrastructure and other critical networks, including Nasa, the Federal Reserve and the US Senate. According to court documents, the seizures involved a group known as “QTFY”, operated by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Co, which created and ...
International relations has long measured power through familiar instruments: military capability, territory, energy, capital and control of trade. The digital revolution added information to that equation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the transformation further by turning information into a strategic capability that can shape economies, governments and societies. For the Association of ...
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iran even as the unpopular and costly war drags on with no end in sight and no sign that the United States is close to achieving any of the lofty goals he set for the conflict. Trump posted an image of himself along with Iran’s slain former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against a stylised landscape background of punishing US a...
Two workers at Frankfurt Airport have died from malaria after being infected by mosquitoes believed to have arrived in Germany on aircraft from malaria-endemic regions, airport operator Fraport and city health authorities said on Wednesday. The first death occurred in early July, the Frankfurt city health authority said, adding that the cause was established only after the patient died. The second...
Tim Curry, the baritone-voiced British actor who pranced to movie fame as a singing, lingerie-clad “sweet transvestite” in the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, has died at the age of 80, his manager said on Wednesday. A cause of death was not immediately given, but Curry had been in ill health for some time. He died peacefully on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, his manager s...
Brazil has not answered two American proposals to formalise cooperation on critical minerals, a senior US diplomat said at Latin America’s largest mining fair, leaving Washington without a bilateral deal as it races to build rare earth supply chains outside China. Matthew Lowe, economic counsellor at the US embassy in Brasilia, said Washington invited Brazil years ago to join the Minerals Security...
Hong Kong police have arrested two women on suspicion of assault at a shopping centre in Kwun Tong, with a viral clip showing a fight breaking out after a five-year-old girl was shoved and then knocked to the ground. The fight took place at the atrium of the APM shopping centre at around 4.45pm on Wednesday as a crowd of parents and young children gathered around a play area. A source said one of ...
Hong Kong police have arrested two women on suspicion of assault at a shopping centre in Kwun Tong, with a viral clip showing a fight breaking out after a five-year-old girl was shoved and then knocked to the ground. The fight took place at the atrium of the APM shopping centre at around 4.45pm on Wednesday as a crowd of parents and young children gathered around a summer sports-themed exhibition....
The front page of the Danville Register & Bee, a local newspaper in southern Virginia with a circulation of fewer than 4,000, carried an unusual headline. “LEADER: CHINA BEHIND THE MISCONCEPTIONS”, it read, above a photograph of two homes dwarfed by a data centre behind. The leader in question was Vic Ingram, chair of the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority (RIFA), a local...
Hong Kong companies should accelerate their expansion into the Middle East, the Asean bloc and Central Asia to reduce their exposure to geopolitical risks, a lawmaker has said, as the United States moved to disrupt immigrant-visa appointments worldwide. Jonathan Lamport, the representative for the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (HKGCC) at Legislative Council, said the visa uncertainty reinf...
Hong Kong companies should accelerate their expansion into the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Central Asia to reduce their exposure to geopolitical risks, the city’s commercial-sector lawmaker has said, as the United States moved to disrupt immigrant-visa appointments worldwide. Jonathan Lamport, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce’s (HKGCC) representative in the Legislative Council, said t...
Meta agreed to pay a coalition of US states as much as US$16.7 billion and to impose sweeping new limits on how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram, according to a court filing on Wednesday that ends a landmark trial in California. The settlement, which a federal judge quickly approved, resolves claims by 29 states that Meta deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the pu...
Meta Platforms has agreed to pay US$17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 US states, state attorneys general announced on Wednesday. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were among 29 states that sued the tech giant in 2023, but the deal cuts short the trial, w...
Beijing has vowed to retaliate against Washington’s expanded Iran sanctions targeting Chinese entities, threatening a clash that could erode recent stability in the US-China relationship and become a new flashpoint weeks before President Xi Jinping visits the US, according to observers. But they say that efforts on both sides, such as this week’s Track 1.5 dialogue, could serve as a check on tensi...
As geopolitical tensions intensify, China’s steel sector – the world’s largest – is facing trade-restrictive measures in overseas markets and shrinking margins, but the country must strive to avoid the mistakes of America’s rust belt, according to an article in the Communist Party’s top theoretical journal. The piece, published in the latest issue of the Qiushi Journal and written jointly by the j...
Iran and Oman have reached agreement on their share of the Strait of Hormuz and its revenues, but the vital waterway will not be reopened if the US does not accept their conditions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday. Iran and Oman have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments...
Asian workers and families already facing years-long waits for US visas could be pushed deeper into uncertainty by a global pause on immigrant visa appointments, as President Donald Trump’s administration tightens legal immigration through new screening and higher costs, experts warn. The US State Department on Tuesday said it had launched a global training initiative for consular officers at all ...
The family of a Hong Kong man imprisoned in the Philippines for more than two decades has appealed to city authorities for help after he remained in custody despite a court in the country recently ruling that he had finished serving his lengthy sentence. Tang Lung-wai was arrested in the country in July 2000 for the possession of methamphetamine, also known as Ice, and placed on remand. He was lat...
China’s delay of a high-stakes mission to hunt for water ice near the moon’s south pole may slow its lunar ambitions, but is unlikely to change the bigger contest with the United States over who can build a lasting presence on the moon, according to space experts. No reason was given when Chang’e-7 was postponed until next year, just hours before Sunday night’s scheduled lift-off, though a major t...
Scientists in China have created a self-exercising muscle graft that might allow bedridden people to gain the benefits of working out without any physical exertion. With just an injection of muscle cells below the skin, the cells self-assembled into muscle grafts, which not only improved whole-body muscle mass in mice but also led to improvements in bone density, endurance, liver function and cogn...
Scientists in China have created a self-exercising muscle graft that could allow bedridden people to obtain the benefits of working out without any physical exertion. With just an injection of muscle cells below the skin, the cells self-assembled into muscle grafts, which not only improved whole-body muscle mass in mice but also led to improvements in bone density, endurance, liver function and co...
Prince Harry and his family arrived back in Britain on Wednesday, the BBC reported, days after it was revealed the couple were relocating six years after quitting royal duties and moving to the United States. Last week, Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, surprised even their close family when it was disclosed that they would move back from California to somewhere outside London for...
Hong Kong customs officers have seized HK$11 million (US$1.4 million) worth of suspected men’s sexual health pills and cancer treatment drugs in a Sheung Shui warehouse, arresting two people. Inspector Shirley Woo Suet‑yi of the customs syndicate crimes investigation bureau said on Wednesday that officers had noticed a rising demand for controlled pharmaceutical products in recent weeks. Investiga...
Forty years ago, the Stockholm Document turned the political promise of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act into a more practical system of confidence-building. Amid the Cold War, Europe’s East and West did not disarm, abandon deterrence or begin to trust one another. Instead, they agreed that military competition could be made safer through prior notification, observation, information exchange and verifi...
Read more: https://sc.mp/cc3d3c A landslide at the China-Nepal border has hit a key checkpoint with Tibet, resulting in “major casualties”, according to state media and footage shared online. The landslide began in Nepal’s Rasuwa region on Wednesday and struck Tibet’s bordering southwestern county Gyirong, according to Xinhua.
After two years of a cautious thaw, China and India are heading towards a pivotal test: can the relationship move beyond managed optics to meaningful engagement? President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to cross paths next week at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Sources expect a short, tightly managed encounter on the side...
After two years of a cautious thaw, China and India are heading towards a pivotal test: can the relationship move beyond managed optics to meaningful engagement? President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to cross paths next week at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Sources expect a short, tightly managed encounter on the side...
At least 72 people were dead and hundreds of others – many of them foreign tourists – were missing on Wednesday night, hours after massive flash floods and landslides engulfed a border area between China and Nepal. Chinese state media reported that the disaster struck Nepal at around 9am, spilling over into Gyirong county in the Tibet autonomous region, causing “major casualties and missing person...
