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US President Donald Trump on Wednesday warned of economic consequences against any country that supported Tehran or provided “any type of lifeline to Iran”. “Today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote on social media. “ANY country that allows its financial institut...
A Chinese national was charged in the United States on Wednesday with committing voter fraud during the 2024 presidential election for allegedly impersonating a fellow countryman and later submitting anonymous tips about him to immigration authorities. Yupeng Sun, a Massachusetts resident, was arrested this week for allegedly submitting a fraudulent voter registration and ballot under the name of ...
South Korea will flag off on Saturday a container ship bound for Europe via the Arctic, testing whether a route opened by melting sea ice can be commercially viable, but risking friction with Western allies, as the voyage requires Russian cooperation. If successful, the trip would be South Korea’s first such commercial voyage to Europe via the Arctic, placing it with China and Russia among the fe...
A mission to rescue Nasa’s ageing Swift observatory in space was cancelled on Wednesday after the spacecraft that was launched to tug the satellite to a higher orbit suffered irredeemable technical issues in space, the rescue craft’s owner, Katalyst Space, said. Katalyst’s Link craft was launched in early July to approach the observatory, also known as Swift, some 347km (216 miles) in space, gra...
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan plan to move back to Britain this month, six years after they stepped down from their royal duties and relocated to the US, media outlets reported on Wednesday. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are moving with Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, from California to Britain for an extended period and the children will begin school there in September,...
Nearly two-thirds of Hong Kong students who requested a reconsideration of their university placement due to reviewed entrance exam results will receive a better outcome than previously allotted. The office for the Joint University Programmes Admissions System (Jupas) said on Thursday that it had received 453 requests for reconsideration following the rechecking and review of Diploma of Secondary ...
Just weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is due to visit the White House, tensions have flared between Washington and its allies after one of the administration’s sharpest rebukes yet. Speaking in Manila on August 10, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defence for policy, pressed regional partners to increase defence spending and align more closely with American priorities. He said Washington so...
US President Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to build a national missile defence system, dubbed the “Golden Dome”, may not be able to fully protect America but could accelerate the global arms race involving China, Russia and North Korea, according to experts. “If we expand these missile defences further, we can expect additional responses,” said Steve Fetter, a professor at the University of Maryla...
Almost five years after the pandemic-era surge in anti-Asian hate in the US, new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data shows a downward trend nationally. But advocates say concerns persist amid immigration crackdowns and heightened US-China geopolitical tension. A survey from Stop AAPI Hate, a self-reporting platform formed during the pandemic, paints an even more worrying picture, with almos...
South Korea’s security strategy has rested for more than seven decades on a single pillar: its alliance with the United States. That pillar has absorbed one blow after another during Donald Trump’s second term as US president. This week brought a fresh signal that has strained the relationship. In a social media post, Trump criticised joint US-South Korea military exercises, calling them “costly” ...
Total US public debt surpassed US$40 trillion for the first time, and has now surged by a third in less than five years, as US lawmakers continue to shrug off calls to contend with historically wide financial deficits. Public debt outstanding stood at US$40.05 trillion as of the close of business on Tuesday, a US Treasury Department release on Wednesday showed. The crossing of the US$30 trillion m...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he planned to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, despite Pyongyang denying that the two leaders were in direct communication. “Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he expected to meet Kim before the end of 2026. Trump, speaking during a tour of a new helipad under construction at the White House, provided no d...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he planned to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, despite Pyongyang denying that the two leaders were in direct communication. “Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he expected to meet Kim before the end of 2026. Trump, speaking during a tour of a new helipad under construction at the White House, provided no d...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he planned to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, despite Pyongyang denying that the two leaders were in direct communication. “Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he expected to meet Kim before the end of 2026. Trump, speaking during a tour of a new helipad under construction at the White House, provided no d...
New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham unveiled plans on Wednesday to offer those sleeping rough a way off the streets by Christmas and vowed to donate part of his wages to help curb homelessness. “No one should have to bed down in a doorway or outside a station,” Burnham said in a statement announcing the new plans. It comes a month after Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister, and builds on...
France saw more than 7,300 excess deaths during heatwaves so far this year, health authorities said on Wednesday, as the country also endured a record number of hot days since mid-June, according to an Agence France-Presse analysis. France has been hit by three summer heatwaves in quick succession: a 14-day spell in June, 16 days in July and another lasting 22 days that began in late July and has ...
North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong, sister of leader Kim Jong-un, on Wednesday denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that Pyongyang planned to send up to 50,000 more troops to Russia to fight for its ally. Kim Yo-jong, a top official in North Korea’s ruling party, said in a statement published by state media KCNA that Zelensky’s estimate was “groundless” and “a self-staged incident”. Zele...
US pharmaceutical firms Merck and Moderna announced on Wednesday encouraging results from a trial of their experimental vaccine against melanoma, potentially clearing the way for approval. The vaccine, called intismeran autogene, showed “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” for skin cancer patients when used with Merck’s Keytruda treatment, the companies said in a stat...
An obstetrician to the stars has been cleared of professional misconduct by Hong Kong’s medical watchdog over allegations she failed to properly record why she administered a labour-inducing drug to a patient who said the procedure left her traumatised. Dr Liang Shuk-tak, who reportedly had delivered babies for actresses Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia and Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, and Olympic diving champi...
Ecuador’s intelligence chief and five US citizens died when a helicopter carrying tourists crashed in central Kenya on Wednesday, killing all seven people on board, officials said. The accident happened at 9.13am local time, in Samburu county, north of the capital, Nairobi, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), after the aircraft departed from the Loisaba wildlife reserve. Images...
A helicopter carrying six tourists and a pilot crashed on Wednesday in Kenya’s Samburu county, north of the capital, Nairobi, killing all those on board, authorities said. The accident happened at 9.13am local time, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), after the aircraft departed from the Loisaba wildlife reserve. “There were seven people on board the helicopter, one pilot and s...
Bangladesh’s request for additional diesel from India has turned a growing power crisis into a potential opening for the two neighbours to repair ties strained in part by the continuous self-exile of ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi and Dhaka’s repeated requests for her extradition. India confirmed on Friday that it was examining Dhaka’s request for extra fuel as Bangladesh ordered sho...
Patriot Critical Minerals of the US plans to dig into a long-abandoned mining site in the sparsely populated state of Nevada to extract tungsten, an important raw material with industrial uses ranging from aerospace gear to common cutting tools. The company, with only that single asset, is applying to the US departments of defence and energy for funding – now more readily available as President Do...
Large language models are expert in intelligence work, able to quickly mine key data and analyse weapons performance – tasks that once took analysts huge amounts of time and effort. But engineers at China’s AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute, developer of the People’s Liberation Army’s backbone J-20 and next generation J-36 stealth fighters, have urged caution. In a paper publishe...
Beijing has banned Chinese entities from assisting with a European Union investigation into e-commerce giant JD.com under the bloc’s foreign subsidies regulation. A statement from China’s Ministry of Justice on Wednesday condemned the probe as “undue extraterritorial jurisdiction measures”, ordering that “no organisation or individual may execute or assist in the execution”. In May, the European C...
Singapore will introduce tax exemptions on profits earned by fund managers and make it easier for investment professionals to obtain visas as it seeks to head off growing competition in the asset management sector, the central bank has said. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the finance ministry plan to exempt from tax investment profits earned by fund managers from managing certain f...
Hong Kong’s main psychiatric hospital has unveiled the city’s first facility exclusively dedicated to child and adolescent patients, as part of a wider redevelopment that offers upgraded wards designed to enhance service quality and foster recovery. The redevelopment of Kwai Chung Hospital has increased the total construction floor area from 80,000 to 134,000 square metres, ensuring it can provide...
Israel’s military acknowledged on Wednesday that its troops had opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab and her family members in Gaza in 2024 and said it had opened a criminal investigation, though rights groups say such probes rarely lead to convictions. Hind Rajab’s killing was one of the most high-profile incidents involving civilian deaths during Israel’s milit...
Israel’s military will open internal investigations over its troops’ killings in Gaza of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab in January 2024 and 15 emergency and aid workers in March 2025, it has said, although rights groups warn such probes rarely lead to convictions. The military said on Wednesday the investigation decisions followed probes by its Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism. It...
One in three Hong Kong kindergarten pupils spends at least an hour a day on social media, with more than 80 per cent of parent-child disputes linked to excessive screen time, a survey has found. The Hong Kong Institute of Family Education released the findings on Wednesday showing recreational screen time rose sharply with age, with 60 per cent of junior form students and 66.6 per cent of high sch...
