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Hong Kong’s new legislation on end-of-life directives could create significant operational challenges, including verifying patients’ wishes in emergencies and affordability barriers for low-income families, according to frontline responders and patient advocates. The warnings come a week before the Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance takes effect next Friday. Under the law, a f...
Hong Kong’s new legislation on end-of-life directives could create significant operational challenges, including verifying patients’ wishes in emergencies and affordability barriers for low-income families, according to frontline responders and patient advocates. The warnings come a week before the Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance takes effect next Friday. Under the law, a f...
The Iranian-aligned Houthis said on Thursday they struck two Saudi oil tankers as part of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, threatening to create a second chokepoint on global oil supplies alongside Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile the US military said on Wednesday it launched a new round of strikes on Iran at President Donald Trump’s direction, marking a 12th successive nig...
The Iranian-aligned Houthis on Thursday claimed military strikes on two Saudi oil tankers as part of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, further raising the risk of a second chokehold on world oil supplies at the Red Sea in coordination with Iran’s attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile the US military said on Wednesday it launched a new round of strikes on Iran at President Donald Trum...
China’s private securities investment funds surpassed 8 trillion yuan (US$1.2 trillion) for the first time at the end of June, emerging as the core engine driving the expansion of the country’s entire private fund industry, according to the Asset Management Association of China. Propelled by the huge growth in securities funds, assets under management in the broader private fund industry hit a rec...
A South Korean court’s conviction of Seoul’s mayor for illegal polling payments threatens to put an end to his presidential ambitions just weeks after he won a historic fifth term. Oh Se-hoon, the 65-year-old conservative who has led South Korea’s capital on and off for nearly two decades, was fined 10 million won (US$6,800) on Wednesday for violating the Political Funds Act ahead of the mayoral b...
US President Donald Trump’s administration will redirect billions of dollars in federal research funding away from universities to individual scientists and AI-focused projects, arguing the overhaul is needed to help the US compete with China. The plan, outlined in a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report released on Tuesday, comes as the administration warns that China has rea...
US lawmakers are examining tariffs, port fees and sanctions targeting China’s shipbuilding industry, as US Congress searches for ways to rebuild America’s severely diminished commercial fleet without increasing costs for US importers and consumers. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, members of both parties described China’s dominance of commercial shipbuilding as an economi...
The US on Wednesday announced a landmark deal with Saudi Arabia that would establish a civilian nuclear programme in the Gulf country, with Washington insisting the agreement includes safeguards against non-proliferation. The move comes as the US under President Donald Trump fights a war with Iran that began in large part over concerns with Tehran’s nuclear programme – an issue that remains a key ...
After Donald Trump’s high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping in May, the idea of US-China “strategic stability” appeared in readouts from both sides. While the White House framed this vision as a “constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity”, Beijing said only that it was a “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability”. China watchers zoomed ...
Chile wants to widen the group of countries buying its copper and attract about US$100 billion in mining investment over the next decade, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, in the most explicit move yet by the new government in Santiago to reduce its exposure to Chinese demand. “The market is highly concentrated and we need to broaden the number of places that buy our copper,” Francisco Perez...
Washington is still not receiving sufficient critical mineral exports from China, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Wednesday, even as top American and Chinese officials met to finalise key economic deliverables for President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the White House. “We are getting a flow of critical minerals from China. It’s not as much as we would want. It’s not at the pace w...
In April 1955, amid the Cold War, 304 representatives across 29 Asian and African nations convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss the principles of a more complex future world order. Among them were India, China and host Indonesia. While India would go on to champion the non-aligned movement at the 1961 Belgrade Conference, Mao Zedong’s China and Sukarno’s Indonesia were more sceptical of the c...
The man convicted of trying to kill Salman Rushdie spent years researching the writer’s whereabouts before stabbing him on a lecture stage, federal prosecutors said Wednesday at the opening of his federal terrorism trial. It is a second trial for Hadi Matar, who was found guilty in a New York state attempted murder case last year. The federal terror charges focus more on Matar’s alleged motive for...
Lawmakers called out China’s growing footprint at the United Nations on Wednesday as a vehicle for espionage even as a Congressional hearing over its funding descended into a heated partisan battle over the Iran war started by US President Donald Trump. “The Chinese peacekeeping department is concentrated in strategically sensitive regions, including areas along Belt and Road [Initiative] corridor...
The Trump administration has accused Chinese start-up Moonshot AI of covertly extracting capabilities from leading US artificial intelligence models and obtaining restricted Nvidia chips abroad, escalating Washington’s scrutiny of the company following the release of its powerful Kimi K3 model. Michael Kratsios, the White House science and technology adviser, alleged on Wednesday that the Beijing-...
Criminal syndicates increasingly turned from targeting Chinese nationals to Americans after Beijing’s 2023 crackdown on online scams in Southeast Asia, analysts said on Wednesday, triggering a global game of “whack-a-mole”. “China has a huge advantage and a head start in terms of trying to protect its own citizens from scams compared to the US,” said Sue-Lin Wong, who hosts the Scam Inc. podcast, ...
A French modelling scout with close ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors and his lawyer said on Wednesday. Under investigation in France, Daniel Siad, 69, was one of several French men accused of aiding the US financier to traffic and abuse women. Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators, but had denied the allegation...
A French modelling scout with close ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors and his lawyer said on Wednesday. Under investigation in France, Daniel Siad, 69, was one of several French men accused of aiding the US financier to traffic and abuse women. Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators, but had denied the allegation...
A French modelling scout with close ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors and his lawyer said on Wednesday. Under investigation in France, Daniel Siad, 69, was one of several French men accused of aiding the US financier to traffic and abuse women. Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators, but had denied the allegation...
From humble origins as a family business run out of an apartment near Moscow, Wildberries has grown in under two decades into Russia’s top online retailer and a key economic driver in the country. It has now become a target of strikes by Ukraine. Ukraine has attacked four Wildberries warehouses over the last week in a widening campaign of drone strikes against a company at the heart of Russia’s ...
From humble origins as a family business run out of an apartment near Moscow, Wildberries has grown in under two decades into Russia’s top online retailer and a key economic driver in the country. It has now become a target of strikes by Ukraine. Ukraine has attacked four Wildberries warehouses over the last week in a widening campaign of drone strikes against a company at the heart of Russia’s ...
Hong Kong authorities have warned of possible enforcement action after mainland Chinese dental chains were suspected of operating illegally in the city, as local industry leaders called for tighter supervision. The Hong Kong Dental Association also said on Wednesday a poll of local practitioners found that each dentist needed to follow up on an average of four cases a month relating to treatment r...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] For a growing number of Hong Kong millionaire respondents, the mainland Greater Bay Area (GBA) cities becoming part of later-life planning, from healthcare access and living space to retirement lifestyle. Yet many have not fully worked out the financial demands of maintaining a life across Hong Kong and mainland GBA cities...
US President Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant each time Tehran attacks a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, escalating Washington’s response as the conflict spread across the region and placed another major shipping route at risk. The warning came hours before Trump was due to attend the return of four US service members killed in Iranian attacks and re...
A married Singapore minister’s sudden resignation amid revelations he had exchanged inappropriate messages with a woman had rocked the city state’s establishment circles, with a groundswell of sentiment calling for him to be retained. Amid online petitions and calls to keep former minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs Faishal Ibrahim following his resignation on Monday, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong...
China and the EU have renewed their joint research agreement, according to Chinese state-linked media, signalling a willingness to collaborate on climate and agriculture despite trade tensions. People’s Financial News, a publication affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, reported on the new two-year agreement on Wednesday. China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and the Euro...
Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio suffered a serious setback in her impeachment trial this week after the Senate allowed prosecutors to examine key financial records in an unexplained wealth case against her. Analysts said the Senate impeachment court’s ruling could give prosecutors a clearer route to show she amassed ill-gotten wealth and pull down her popularity ratings in time for t...
The United States Coast Guard said it closely tracked Chinese polar expedition vessels transiting the Bering Sea on their way to the Arctic Ocean last week, amid unease over Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions in the region. The US Coast Guard Cutter Munro actively monitored the Chinese research ships Xuelong and Xuelong 2 as they passed northbound through the US exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and ext...
Malaysia would not be intimidated into changing its decades-old policy of not allowing Israeli nationals into the country, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday. Anwar said Malaysia was also not in contravention of any international laws for having such a policy in place. “I would like to respond to the United States lawmakers, some of them at least, who stated categorically that Malaysia...
