Live headlines from trusted global sources. Click any story to open it on the original website.
The roar from thousands of People’s Justice Party (PKR) delegates gathered at a grand convention centre in Melaka last weekend exuded all the confidence expected of a party leading Malaysia’s government. The past three years have been the culmination of more than two decades of struggle for PKR, with it finally achieving its long-held goal of installing leader Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister and w...
A punishing drought is draining Europe’s great rivers, pushing the Loire, the Danube and the Rhine towards record lows. At the Kaub gauging station, the reference point for shipping on the Rhine – Germany’s economic artery – the water level fell to 17cm (6.7 inches) this month, a low unseen since measurements began in 1880. Meanwhile, wildfires are burning across southern Europe, forcing the evacu...
TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance have agreed to pay US$400 million to settle a US Justice Department lawsuit accusing the video-sharing app of violating children’s online privacy laws, resolving a major federal case as the platform’s American operations remain under intense political scrutiny. The settlement, announced on Friday, resolves allegations brought by the Justice Department and th...
It is not the most enticing reading material: “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.” But this 59-page report, issued last month by the US Treasury Department, reveals much about contemporary America. Remember the joint intervention by Japan and the United States in the international currency market to prop up the yen at the end of July? By now...
The US Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue construction of his White House ballroom project for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that would halt much of the development. The court’s action, known as an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider the administration’s formal request to let it continue working on the US$...
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Friday it was time to end the months-long Middle East war with the US because Tehran appeared to be in a stronger position than Washington. Talks between the long-time foes remain on hold, and the war started by the US and Israel in February has been locked in a stalemate. Tehran is keeping the key Strait of Hormuz partially shut, and Washington is persi...
Turkey has sought an international arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of “genocide” linked to Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the justice minister announced Friday. Turkey has become a virulent critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has frequently accused Netan...
Southeast Asian leaders have long insisted they will not be forced to pick sides in the great-power rivalry between the US and China. But their posture is about to be further tested. This time, the battleground is AI. While Washington wants the region locked into Pax Silica – its bid to build a China-free artificial intelligence supply chain – Beijing wants its neighbours to join China’s own World...
An 18-year-old man armed with a sword attacked students at a Swedish high school on Friday, killing one person and injuring three, and police shot and detained him as media reported the attacker was a former student at the school. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school in the central Swedish town of Fagersta, which has about 13,000 residents. The school had just re...
A man armed with a sword severely injured two teenage boys, as well as a third person, at a Swedish high school on Friday, and one person was later detained, local authorities said, triggering a massive response from emergency services. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school, in the small town of Fagersta, in central Sweden. The school had just opened after summer re...
A man armed with a sword injured several people at a Swedish high school on Friday and one person was later detained, local authorities said. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school, which has some 450 students aged 16 to 20, in the town of Fagersta in central Sweden. “A call was received regarding a case of ongoing deadly violence at a school in Fagersta,” police sa...
A former assistant warden at a residential home for the intellectually disabled in Hong Kong has been accused of raping a resident multiple times two years ago. Chung Pui-kei has been charged with five counts of rape of a mentally incapacitated woman who lived at a home in Tai Po linked to the Hong Chi Association, an NGO, between July and August 2024. Prosecutor Human Lam Hiu-man outlined the fiv...
Tesla has issued the largest-ever product recall in mainland China’s electric vehicle (EV) market, as Elon Musk’s firm pledges to fix a door-handle issue affecting nearly 3 million cars. The massive recall comes as Chinese regulators move to ban retractable car door handles over safety fears, after a fatal incident last year in which a driver was left trapped inside a burning vehicle as passers-by...
A US artificial intelligence start-up backed by OpenAI has built its first in-house model on Chinese lab Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, highlighting a growing shift by Western tech firms towards Chinese open-weight systems amid soaring development costs. San Francisco-based legal tech provider Harvey, whose high-profile backers also include Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, said on Thursday that it...
Midway through a three-month negotiating period with Beijing, new data show the trade balances of 24 European Union member states are still moving in what Brussels considers to be the wrong direction. China extended its trade surplus over all but three EU members in July compared to a year earlier, calculations based on new Chinese customs figures showed. In some instances, the monthly swing was d...
Midway through a three-month negotiating period with Beijing, new data show the trade balances of 24 European Union member states are still moving in what Brussels considers to be the wrong direction. China extended its trade surplus over all but three EU members in July compared to a year earlier, calculations based on new Chinese customs figures showed. In some instances, the monthly swing was d...
Prince Harry and other high-profile claimants must make an interim payment of £9.54 million (US$13 million) towards the legal costs of the Daily Mail publisher after losing their privacy lawsuits, London’s High Court ruled on Friday. Last month, judge Matthew Nicklin comprehensively rejected the case brought by King Charles’ younger son, singer Elton John and five other figures, rejecting alleg...
China’s three state-owned telecoms giants have made billable artificial intelligence tokens a key focus of their growth strategies, as AI adoption accelerates across the country and computing demand soars. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all pointed to AI and computing operations as key growth drivers in their first-half financial disclosures released this month, presenting usage of t...
A pair of landmark rocket recoveries in recent weeks has brought China a step closer to mastering reusable launch technology – a breakthrough analysts said could give the People’s Liberation Army an advantage in combat by increasing the resilience of its satellite-supported “kill chain”, the process of identifying, tracking and engaging a target. In a first for China, commercial rocket company Lan...
Hong Kong authorities will cap access to a popular Sai Kung trail overlooking hexagonal rock columns at 2,000 people per day during several stretches from next month and require real-name registration for visitors, marking the city’s first countryside crowd control measures of its kind. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department announced the arrangement on Friday for the Po Pin Chau s...
Smuggled cockroaches, frozen domestic rats and mealworms were among a haul of pests seized at a border checkpoint in Hong Kong, with a local driver arrested, authorities said on Friday. The Customs and Excise Department said officers intercepted the 118kg (260lbs) shipment – which also contained moth larvae and fruit flies mixed with declared goods – inside a goods vehicle at the Man Kam To contro...
The centenary of Jiang Zemin’s birth, marked on August 17 with a memorial in Beijing attended and addressed by President Xi Jinping, was more than an occasion to commemorate a former Chinese leader. It was also an exercise in political history: a moment to locate Jiang, the era he led and the reform legacy associated with him within the broader story of the Communist Party of China’s evolution and...
A man was sentenced to nine years and 10 months’ jail, and eight strokes of the cane on Friday for abusing multiple young boys who were under his care. The man beat his youngest victim – a six-year-old boy – with a hanger more than 600 times, forced him to hold a push-up position for hours, and made him sleep in the toilet and drink his own urine. The boy suffered severe injuries as a result, incl...
India’s long-delayed plan to build six advanced conventional submarines with Germany has moved closer to final approval, a deal analysts say could test the depth of New Delhi’s “Make in India” defence ambitions while helping it respond to growing undersea pressure from Pakistan and China. The US$7.3 billion deal would involve building submarines for the Indian navy with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Mari...
Singapore’s latest package of tax breaks and visa incentives for fund managers could enhance its appeal as a leading asset management hub, as competition with Hong Kong intensifies for global capital and high-value financial talent, analysts have said. While the measures would help maintain Singapore’s competitiveness, they are unlikely to create a significant or lasting advantage over Hong Kong, ...
President Donald Trump announced on Friday the United States would allow tariff-free imports of up to 300,000 tonnes of ground beef over the next 90 days, in a bid to lower prices for American consumers with elections looming. “As we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers, for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tonnes of product for ground beef to be impor...
China and Indonesia’s recent joint naval exercise east of Taiwan has prompted speculation that other Southeast Asian countries may follow suit. Last Wednesday’s drill – which one observer said may “lower the political threshold” for neighbouring countries – was followed by a meeting of the two countries’ foreign and defence ministers on Friday, where they discussed further military cooperation and...
An associate professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has been charged by the corruption watchdog for allegedly receiving HK$2.2 million (US$280,500) in bribes in return for awarding seven procurement contracts for information technology education services to a vendor. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said on Friday that it had prosecuted Gary Wong Ka-wai, 45, of the univ...
Australian police charged a man with foreign interference on Friday for allegedly seeking to pass intelligence about Ukrainian military activities to Russia. The 27-year-old Russian-Australian citizen underwent “military-style” training in Russia and later joined the Ukrainian armed forces, Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett told a news conference. Police allege he travelled to ...
A team of researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has conducted the city’s first robot-assisted pelvic fracture surgery in what promises to be a safer, less intrusive alternative to a procedure typically considered among the most challenging. CUHK’s faculty of medicine on Friday said the novel orthopaedic robotic surgical system could turn a “new page” in trauma care amid a ris...
