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Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Thursday slammed as “indecent” reported attempts by an American to pay locals US$200,000 each to sign a petition calling for Greenland to join the United States. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the US needs to annex the Danish autonomous territory to ensure national security. “A foreign individual is offering money for a signature t...
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Thursday slammed as “indecent” reported attempts by an American to pay locals US$200,000 each to sign a petition calling for Greenland to join the United States. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the US needs to annex the Danish autonomous territory to ensure national security. “A foreign individual is offering money for a signature t...
UK police said on Thursday they had arrested a man wielding a weapon who “was behaving in an intimidating manner” close to the home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in eastern England. Norfolk police confirmed they had been called to an incident late on Wednesday near the Sandringham Estate “and the man was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and possession of an offensive weapon”. UK med...
UK police said on Thursday they had arrested a man wielding a weapon who “was behaving in an intimidating manner” close to the home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in eastern England. Norfolk police confirmed they had been called to an incident late on Wednesday near the Sandringham Estate “and the man was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and possession of an offensive weapon”. UK med...
Beijing’s study of the wars in Iran and Ukraine could sharpen its ability to wage information warfare against Americans during a Taiwan Strait conflict, exposing vulnerabilities in US preparedness, experts said on Wednesday. S. Clinton Hinote, a retired US Lieutenant General, said he was “impressed” with the propaganda coming out of Iran since the outbreak of the war in February, warning that Beij...
Authorities in Norway arrested a Chinese citizen on espionage allegations on Thursday in connection with a purported effort to set up a receiver to collect sensitive satellite data, the country’s domestic intelligence service said. Norwegian security officials also searched two premises in connection with the arrest, including one on an island in northern Norway that is home to Andoya Spaceport, w...
Authorities in Norway arrested a Chinese citizen on espionage allegations on Thursday in connection with a purported effort to set up a receiver to collect sensitive satellite data, the country’s domestic intelligence service said. Norwegian security officials also searched two premises in connection with the arrest, including one on an island in northern Norway that is home to Andoya Spaceport, w...
The Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom has dismissed the conviction of two men linked to a Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) as a “political move”, after a British court found the pair guilty of spying on activists. Following the verdict, the Hong Kong government said the allegations were “absolutely” unrelated to the administration, while maintaining that the London office was conduc...
The Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom has dismissed the conviction of two men linked to a Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) as a “political move”, after a British court found the pair guilty of spying on activists. Following the verdict, the Hong Kong government said the allegations were “absolutely” unrelated to the administration, while maintaining that the London office was conduc...
A British court has convicted two men linked to an Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) of spying on activists from the city on behalf of Chinese authorities. Bill Yuen Chung-biu, the London office’s manager, and Peter Wai Chi-leung were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service on Thursday, two years after their arrests thrust the role of Hong Kong’s overseas promotion offic...
The World Health Organization insisted on Thursday that a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic did not mark the beginning of a Covid-like crisis. “This is not the start of an epidemic. This is not the start of a pandemic,” WHO epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told reporters, insisting: “This is not Covid.” The WHO also said it exp...
Beijing should adopt a more assertive approach to global cognitive warfare, Chinese scholars said, calling for more action amid a great power rivalry. The appeal was made by Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, and Ding Zhuang, an associate research fellow at the institute, who said in a paper last week that China should improve its cognitive warfar...
Hong Kong education authorities have ordered a primary school to submit a report after a national flag was found hanging upside down on campus. The Education Bureau said on Thursday that it had followed up on the incident at F.S.F.T.F. Fong Shu Chuen Primary School in Fanling. Online images earlier showed that the national flag was hanging upside down on top of a building at the school. “The Educa...
The leaders of Thailand and Cambodia agreed on Thursday to pursue trust-building measures to advance a fragile ceasefire and establish peace, after rare talks over last year’s deadly fighting between the two neighbours. Troops remain deployed on both sides of their long-disputed 817km (508-mile) border after battles in July and December when skirmishes quickly escalated into air strikes and heavy...
China made Brazil its top global investment destination last year, pouring US$6.1 billion into the country across a record 52 projects. The figures come from the China-Brazil Business Council (CBBC), which released its annual report on Thursday. The 45 per cent jump in value from the previous year far outpaced the 4.8 per cent rise in total foreign investment into Brazil. It also dwarfed China’s w...
Hong Kong health authorities are seeking more information from the World Health Organization (WHO) on an outbreak of a deadly hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, while ramping up efforts to prevent the rare disease from reaching the city’s shores. The Department of Health’s Centre for Health Protection revealed on Thursday that it had ...
The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) is pressing ahead with the relaunch of gold futures as mainland China’s appetite for the metal continues to grow. The city would continue to introduce new gold products and facilities to capture the growing opportunities of the gold market, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Thursday at the LME Asia Metals Seminar 2026 in Hong Kong. The HKEX pla...
Chinese technology billionaire Chen Tianqiao’s artificial intelligence start-up MiroMind is suspending its services in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, in the latest sign that some of the country’s most globally ambitious firms are increasingly retreating from the domestic market as geopolitical tensions reshape the industry following the Manus saga. In an email sent to select users on Wednesd...
A top Chinese university has taken disciplinary action against its leading cancer researcher after finding academic misconduct in a 2025 Nature study. The study, which claimed that starving cancer cells of valine – a building block of proteins found in food – could trigger DNA damage and slow tumour growth, contained problematic data in 14 of its 15 figures, Shanghai-based Tongji University said i...
Conflict in the Middle East is threatening the coming planting season, a UN official has warned, as countries already reeling from fertiliser shortages and surging costs face shocks to food security. The Strait of Hormuz, a major global chokepoint for fertilisers and other agricultural inputs as well as oil, has been under blockade since the start of joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February. D...
The Chinese military must increase the private sector’s role in research to prevent Western sanctions from “strangling” the country’s efforts at defence innovation, a top official of the People’s Liberation Army has urged. Zhang Zhan, political commissar of the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), said China’s hi-tech industries were facing a “grim and complex” situation as the United...
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left the Vatican on Thursday after seeing Pope Leo in what was expected to have been a fraught meeting following President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the Catholic leader over the Iran war. Rubio spent 2-1/2 hours at the Vatican before driving away in a convoy under tight security. He met initially Leo before sitting down with senior Vatican officials, inc...
As Beijing increasingly sees the country as a chessboard, the central government is no longer simply asking every province to grow faster; it wants them to grow differently. Reporting on the end of the 14th five-year plan and preparation for the 15th five-year plan frames provinces and cities as specialised implementation units, reflecting a territorial division of labour. The central government w...
India’s military is exploring alternative energy sources amid surging oil and gas prices caused by supply disruption from the Iran war, a trend that analysts say is set to accelerate among other Asian countries heavily dependent on energy imports. According to local media reports, the Indian army plans to get biogas stoves to replace natural gas-fired appliances for cooking. It is also exploring t...
A Hong Kong appellate court has quashed the murder conviction of a jobless man who allegedly beat his girlfriend to death and hid her body under a mattress seven years ago, ruling that the trial judge had not properly directed the jury to fully consider the alleged perpetrator’s violent personality traits. The Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled in favour of Law Wai-man, who was found guilty of murd...
Hong Kong restaurants will be able to apply for licences from May 18 to allow dogs under a new scheme, with the first designated venues expected to admit pets from July. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said on Thursday that applications would open on May 18 and close on June 8. In the first phase, applications will be capped at 1,000 restaurants. If the number exceeds the quota, plac...
Hong Kong restaurants will be able to apply for licences from May 18 to allow dogs under a new scheme, with the first designated venues expected to admit pets from July. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said on Thursday that applications would open on May 18 and close on June 8. In the first phase, applications will be capped at 1,000 restaurants. If the number exceeds the quota, plac...
Countries worldwide scrambled on Thursday to trace people who had left the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak before it got marooned off the coast of Cabo Verde, to prevent further spread of the disease. Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – died in the outbreak on the MV Hondius. Eight people, including a Swiss citizen, were suspected to have contracted the virus, according...
Countries worldwide scrambled on Thursday to trace people who had left the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak before it got marooned off the coast of Cabo Verde, to prevent further spread of the disease. Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – died in the outbreak on the MV Hondius. Eight people, including a Swiss citizen, were suspected to have contracted the virus, according...
A Hong Kong building inspector mistook illegal alterations to emergency staircases at a housing estate ravaged in a deadly fire as protective measures for “broken” windows, because he based his assessment solely on documents and did not carry out a site visit, a public inquiry has heard. Senior maintenance surveyor Nick Yung Siu-lun, the head of the minor works team of the Housing Bureau’s indepen...
