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Can the SCO become a more influential force globally?
SCMP

Can the SCO become a more influential force globally?

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...

Hong Kong-based mediation body ‘ready to tackle state disputes, serve as Asian legal hub’
SCMP

Hong Kong-based mediation body ‘ready to tackle state disputes, serve as Asian legal hub’

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...

Hong Kong’s IOMed ‘ready to tackle state disputes, serve as Asian legal hub’
SCMP

Hong Kong’s IOMed ‘ready to tackle state disputes, serve as Asian legal hub’

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 aviation regulator steps up safety communication with foreign carriers
SCMP

China’s aviation regulator steps up safety communication with foreign carriers

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 faces quandary over Ukraine’s air defence system request

South Korea faces quandary over Ukraine’s air defence system request

SCMP

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...

2,300-year-old wine found near Great Wall ruin reveals ancient brewing secrets

2,300-year-old wine found near Great Wall ruin reveals ancient brewing secrets

SCMP

“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 growth beats peer Asia-Pacific markets

Hong Kong’s commercial property investment growth beats peer Asia-Pacific markets

SCMP

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...

Trump signs order to revamp childhood vaccines, against medical groups’ guidance

Trump signs order to revamp childhood vaccines, against medical groups’ guidance

SCMP

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...

Trump extends Jones Act waiver for 90 days, narrows scope

Trump extends Jones Act waiver for 90 days, narrows scope

SCMP

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 moves to join Brazil’s WTO fight over Trump’s forced labour tariffs

China moves to join Brazil’s WTO fight over Trump’s forced labour tariffs

SCMP

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...

China is building nuclear reactors faster than the West. Can it keep up the pace?

China is building nuclear reactors faster than the West. Can it keep up the pace?

SCMP

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...

Chinese national pleads guilty to trying to export US military equipment to China

Chinese national pleads guilty to trying to export US military equipment to China

SCMP

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...

US visa revocations hit 175,000, on pace for new record under Trump

US visa revocations hit 175,000, on pace for new record under Trump

SCMP

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 ...

Todd Blanche is sworn in as attorney general after bruising confirmation fight

Todd Blanche is sworn in as attorney general after bruising confirmation fight

SCMP

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...

US judge dismisses criminal case against Indian billionaire Adani

US judge dismisses criminal case against Indian billionaire Adani

SCMP

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...

Defence lawyer takes aim at psychiatrist’s care before Lindsay Clancy killed her children

Defence lawyer takes aim at psychiatrist’s care before Lindsay Clancy killed her children

SCMP

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 ...

US court allows thousands of lawsuits against tech firms over social media addiction

US court allows thousands of lawsuits against tech firms over social media addiction

SCMP

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...

Trump demands Iran pay compensation as hopes fade for Hormuz agreement

Trump demands Iran pay compensation as hopes fade for Hormuz agreement

SCMP

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 ...

Nvidia to team with Wall Street on US$500 billion package for AI infrastructure projects

Nvidia to team with Wall Street on US$500 billion package for AI infrastructure projects

SCMP

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 bars anti-war party from parliamentary election

Russia bars anti-war party from parliamentary election

SCMP

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 ...

Drought declared in ‘almost three-quarters’ of England, government says

Drought declared in ‘almost three-quarters’ of England, government says

SCMP

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...

A rare rocket failure led to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

A rare rocket failure led to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

SCMP

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...

A rare rocket failure leads to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

A rare rocket failure leads to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

SCMP

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...

A rare rocket failure lead to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

A rare rocket failure lead to knock-on effects on China’s space launches. What happened?

SCMP

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...

China’s Long March 7A rocket explodes after launch, satellite lost

China’s Long March 7A rocket explodes after launch, satellite lost

SCMP

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 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 satellite towar...

Congo’s Ebola outbreak started months before it was declared, says WHO

Congo’s Ebola outbreak started months before it was declared, says WHO

SCMP

The fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record started in February, months before it was officially declared in mid-May, the World Health Organization said on Monday, as responders in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) struggle to catch up. The WHO regional director for Africa, Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a press conference that sequencing indicated the outbreak’s start. He said some cases ea...

Hong Kong to review warning system after record heat triggers lowest alert

Hong Kong to review warning system after record heat triggers lowest alert

SCMP

Hong Kong labour authorities have pledged to review the city’s heat stress warning system, a day after the weather forecaster issued the lowest-level alert for outdoor workers despite record-breaking temperatures, prompting questions about the index’s effectiveness. The pledge on Monday followed calls from experts for the government to adopt an international measurement that gives greater weight t...

Wave of US tariff refunds flows back to Chinese firms, buoying profits by millions

Wave of US tariff refunds flows back to Chinese firms, buoying profits by millions

SCMP

The wave of US tariff refunds is reaching Chinese companies. More than US$38 million in tariff rebates, plus accrued interest, from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has landed in the bank accounts of five listed Chinese firms since last month, providing a windfall that is expected to bolster their earnings. The five listed firms primarily operate in the automotive and healthcare sectors. Eac...

Hong Kong, Malaysia set for ‘deeper ties in semiconductor making, other sectors’

Hong Kong, Malaysia set for ‘deeper ties in semiconductor making, other sectors’

SCMP

Hong Kong and Malaysia are poised to deepen economic ties across key sectors, such as semiconductor manufacturing, to unlock mutual growth opportunities, the head of the city’s Trade Development Council (TDC) has said. Council chairman Frederick Ma Si-hang made the comment on Monday as he joined Hong Kong’s biggest delegation to Malaysia to date under the city’s “Think Business, Think Hong Kong” f...