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Traffic almost came to a standstill 2km (1.2 miles) from the Shanghai Expo Centre on Friday, the first day of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). With temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), scores of attendees abandoned their taxis to walk the rest of the way under the hot sun. This year’s conference mirrored the weather: it was the hottest, most crowded...
Searchers have found the wreckage from a Pan Am flight that plunged into the ocean off Puerto Rico in 1952, an accident that killed 52 and led to requirements for the passenger safety briefings given on every commercial flight. The plane, the Clipper Endeavor, made a hard landing after losing engine power shortly after take-off. The 17 passengers and crew who survived told investigators everyone l...
US President Donald Trump has approved an agreement with Saudi Arabia that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear programme, according to two people familiar with the matter. The people, who were not authorised to comment publicly about the yet to be formally announced decision, said the agreement is expected to be announced publicly as ea...
Pacific island nations are facing a security challenge in responding to China’s recent missile launch near Tuvalu and keeping their vision of a region as an “ocean of peace”, as analysts say the diverse nature of their ties with Beijing is complicating efforts towards a united response. On July 6, China said one of its navy’s nuclear submarines launched a “strategic missile” carrying a dummy warhe...
A leading Chinese brokerage house has ended market making for the mainland’s only South Korea-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF), as Beijing steps up efforts to stabilise its capital markets and protect retail investors amid volatility in its East Asian neighbour’s stock market. Shenzhen-headquartered China Merchants Securities withdrew as a liquidity provider for the Huatai-PineBridge China-Korea...
The struggle between the US and China over who will lead in artificial intelligence is one of the defining competitions of our time. In the second part of our exclusive interview with a key player defining Washington’s policy on AI, Jacob Helberg, US undersecretary of state for economic affairs, discusses America’s efforts to rally its allies and cut dependence on China by securing alternative rar...
A tenant in a residential block in southern China called the police, reporting a smell resembling corpses in their building. It turned out that the odour was actually coming from a neighbour cooking with Guangdong’s traditional stinky vinegar. On July 14, a woman in Guangdong province, surnamed Chen, posted about someone calling the police to check on her home. She stated: “My neighbour thought I ...
Hong Kong’s rainfall so far this month has already surpassed typical levels for July by 23 per cent, a review of Observatory data shows, with a meteorologist warning the city will experience more extreme downpours due to global warming. The Observatory also said on Tuesday that Hong Kong would be hit by rainstorms again over the weekend following weeks of heavy rain as a tropical cyclone neared th...
Japan is turning to five lesser-used straits in Southeast Asia as insurance against the next maritime shock, with plans to create detailed nautical charts for ships to navigate through these waters and bring vital goods to its economy. Tokyo would work with Indonesia and the Philippines to chart their respective straits, the foreign ministry told the Yomiuri newspaper, as it stepped up efforts to ...
The United States’ war in Iran has cost US$37.5 billion so far, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday, an increase of nearly US$8 billion since the last public estimate. Hegseth told lawmakers at a hearing in Washington that the figure included certain aspects of the war as well as anticipated costs through September 30. It was unclear how the Pentagon arrived at the US$37.5 billio...
China’s drug regulator has for the first time approved a novel, globally trialled medicine ahead of authorities in the United States, Japan and Europe, marking a “historic breakthrough” as the country doubles down on biopharmaceuticals as one of its growth engines. The drug was filed for market approval in multiple countries, and “China was the first in the world to approve it”, Xu Xiaoqiang, head...
China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry sits at the centre of numerous economic and geopolitical trends: consumer spending, environmental protection, trade policy, high-end manufacturing, technology and more. In this short series, we assess the current state of the sector within these broader contexts. Here, Yeon Woo Lee asks whether Beijing has written a blueprint for developing countries to kick-...
Over the past year, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has seen rapid development in Central Asia. This has been evidenced by the launch of several railway and road routes connecting China’s industrial and economic centres to logistics hubs in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. China’s improved transport to the region reflects two interrelated trends: growing trade momentum and Central Asia’s ...
US President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to help Lebanon “a lot” as its president, Joseph Aoun, sought Washington’s backing for a fragile effort to disarm Hezbollah and forge a path to peace with Israel. Aoun, the first Lebanese president invited to Washington since 2009, asked Trump for political support and continued backing for the Lebanese army, which has begun deploying in southern areas un...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday sacked his Soviet-trained army chief Oleksandr Syrsky following a political crisis triggered by the removal of a popular, young and tech-savvy defence minister. The Ukrainian leader announced he was appointing joint forces commander Mykhailo Drapaty in his place. Syrsky, 60, had served in the role since 2024 and was among Kyiv’s most experienced co...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that he was dismissing Oleksandr Syrsky, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army, amid an ongoing political crisis triggered by the removal of a popular defence minister. The Ukrainian leader announced he was appointing joint forces commander Mykhailo Drapaty in his place. Syrsky, 60, had served in the role since 2024 and was among Kyiv’s most ex...
The Solomon Islands, widely considered China’s closest security partner in the South Pacific, will soon sign a deal allowing the US Coast Guard to patrol its waters with local police aboard, Prime Minister Matthew Wale announced on a trip to Washington to strengthen bilateral ties. While the South Pacific nation has deepened its ties with China over the past few years, particularly following the s...
A Chinese researcher’s vision of serving spicy crawfish soup to astronauts on Mars became an unlikely symbol of Washington’s growing anxiety over China’s scientific ambitions at a US Senate hearing on Tuesday. Drew Endy, associate professor at Stanford University and director of bio-strategy and leadership at the Hoover Institution, said that last autumn he met a 20-year-old Chinese researcher fro...
A Chinese researcher’s vision of serving spicy crawfish soup to astronauts on Mars became an unlikely symbol of Washington’s growing anxiety over China’s scientific ambitions at a US Senate hearing on Tuesday. Drew Endy, associate professor at Stanford University and director of bio-strategy and leadership at the Hoover Institution, said that last autumn he met a 20-year-old Chinese researcher fro...
France’s parliament on Tuesday approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making France the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok. President Emmanuel Macron has championed the ban as a flagship reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September. “France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and...
For years, Washington has fixated on the gap between US and Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models as AI has increasingly taken centre stage in the strategic competition between the world’s two leading powers. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 established a clear early lead for the US, with the first batch of export controls on advanced semiconductor chips introduced in October tha...
US President Donald Trump’s administration is using another tariff threat to put fresh pressure on Canadian provinces to end their boycotts of American alcohol. But provincial leaders are not backing off. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would not lift his province’s ban on the sale of American wine and spirits in government-run stores unless the US removes sectoral tariffs on cars and steel. “We...
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump signalled that Washington would confront Beijing over its alleged interference in the 2020 election but played down the prospect of retaliation. “We’re going to talk to them about it,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the alleged interference “took place a long...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] When Professor Fiona Devine returned to Hong Kong this year, it was her first visit since 2019. Since then, both the city and the global higher education landscape have changed significantly. Now Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester, and formerly head of Alliance Manchester B...
A Hong Kong kindergarten clerk who was seriously injured by a taxi during the 2019 anti-government protests has told the High Court she has been unable to resume a normal life, citing ongoing mobility limitations, extensive leg scarring and the likelihood of future knee replacement surgery. Park Hoi-lam’s lawyers on Tuesday urged the court to find taxi driver Henry Cheng Kwok-chuen liable for at l...
Hong Kong police arrested 991 people and discovered betting records amounting to HK$365 million (US$46.5 million) during a crackdown on illegal gambling during the World Cup. The force said on Tuesday that it raided 249 premises suspected of being linked to illegal gambling during its enforcement campaign in June and July that targeted activities surrounding the global sporting event. Officers arr...
The launch of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 has revived an intense debate that has raged in Silicon Valley ever since DeepSeek’s shock breakthrough last year: whether China can overcome its limited access to advanced chips to match the performance of the United States’ frontier artificial intelligence models. Trillions of US dollars might rest on the answer, as some see Chinese developers’ success in incr...
Chinese researchers have called for more coordination among the country’s maritime authorities to counter an American strategy that has put pressure on Beijing across three critical waterways in the first island chain. By synchronising operations across flashpoints in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, Washington’s “three seas linkage” strategy aimed to force Beijing in...
The man accused of murdering former government minister Ann Widdecombe struck her 21 times on the top of her head with a hammer during the attack at her home earlier this month, prosecutors told a London court on Tuesday. Widdecombe, 78, who was a prominent figure in Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK but no longer a member of parliament, was found dead at her home in rural southwest England on ...
Asia’s oil buyers are facing the risk of a second maritime chokepoint being disrupted after Iran-aligned Houthi militants threatened to impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, even as shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain severely disrupted by the US-Iran conflict. Analysts said any serious disruption in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could leave Asia with fewer alternatives for Middle Eastern ...
