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The United States has stepped up scrutiny of China’s overseas lending, warning that the lack of transparency surrounding Chinese loans could increase the risk of unexpected defaults and debt restructuring in emerging markets. In its 2026 Fiscal Transparency Report released on Tuesday, the US State Department said China had failed to meet its minimum transparency requirements, citing deficiencies i...
A US helicopter on Tuesday fired missiles into the engine room of a Panama-flagged cargo ship that attempted to break the American blockade of Iran’s ports, the United States military said. The US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired on and disabled the M/V Vela Nova “after the ship’s civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces”, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on social media, adding th...
Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least 10 people overnight and wounded dozens, Kyiv said on Tuesday, accusing Moscow of launching North Korean missiles in the raid. The allegation comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned – without providing evidence – that Moscow was receiving more ballistic projectiles and troops from its ally Pyongyang. Russia has turned to North Korea f...
Facebook owner Meta Platforms is set to fully unwind its acquisition of Chinese-founded artificial intelligence platform Manus, more than three months after Beijing blocked the deal on national security grounds, capping off another high-profile decoupling between the US and China in the critical area of AI. On Tuesday, Manus wrote in a note to users that it would delete data by “certain users” gen...
Israel and Venezuela announced on Tuesday that they had renewed consular relations 17 years after diplomatic ties were severed between the two countries. The move comes after Israel sent an aid and disaster response delegation to Venezuela in June following devastating twin earthquakes that left thousands dead. It also follows the United States’ toppling of Venezuela’s former leader Nicolas Maduro...
Canadian police on Tuesday charged a man with making a bomb threat against the US consulate in Halifax, the latest security incident involving an American diplomatic post in Canada after two shootings at the US consulate in Toronto this year. Several streets downtown were evacuated after Halifax Regional Police found a car linked to the suspect, Ali Assakereh, parked near the consulate on Monday m...
Around 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to secondary education since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the United Nations said on Tuesday, urging an end to such “discrimination”. The Taliban administration, recognised solely by Russia, has imposed a series of restrictions on women that the United Nations has characterised as “gender apartheid”. Girls cannot study beyon...
Human Rights Watch and three other advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to challenge its campaign against the International Criminal Court, arguing that sanctions against ICC judges and prosecutors are undermining the ability to prosecute people responsible for humanity’s worst crimes. The complaint – filed in the Southern District of New York – says that US President Donald Tr...
The Trump administration’s export-control licensing regime is achieving little strategic benefit while costing the United States billions of dollars in lost exports and undermining American companies’ global market share, according to a new business survey. “Months-long licensing delays are costing the United States billions of dollars in exports and eroding American market share globally,” the US...
When Manli Ho saw her father’s name being used to advertise US$40,000 houses in his hometown in China, she was outraged. “He Saved 18,000 Jewish Lives in WWII. His Hometown Has Homes for $40,000,” one headline on the now-removed English-language webpage read. Manli Ho, 75, is the daughter of Ho Feng-shan, the Chinese diplomat widely known in the West as the “Chinese Schindler” for issuing thousand...
When Manli Ho saw her father’s name being used to advertise US$40,000 houses in his hometown in China, she was outraged. “He Saved 18,000 Jewish Lives in WWII. His Hometown Has Homes for $40,000,” one headline on the now-removed English-language webpage read. Manli Ho, 75, is the daughter of Ho Feng-shan, the Chinese diplomat widely known in the West as the “Chinese Schindler” for issuing thousand...
Hong Kong authorities have defended the city’s childhood vaccination programme after the United States scaled back its immunisation recommendations, stressing that public health policies should not be “arbitrarily altered”. The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said on Tuesday that all public health policies and medical recommendations had to be based on scientific evidence. “Vaccination schedule...
Baptist University has said it is reviewing the security of its information technology (IT) systems after a ransomware group claimed online to have illegally accessed the Hong Kong institution’s data. The allegations were made by “The Gentlemen”, an advanced cybercrime group that first appeared in the middle of last year. Cybersecurity monitoring platforms reported that about 1,900 credentials lin...
Moscow on Tuesday freed a former US marine jailed in Russia since 2022 after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a pardon for the ailing American based on humanitarian reasons, US officials said. The White House and the State Department had urged Moscow to release Robert Gilman, 32, so he can receive medical treatment in the United States. Gilman was being held in a prison in Voronezh, abo...
A Hong Kong court has ruled in favour of embattled conglomerate Evergrande in a debt-recovery case, allowing it to recoup about HK$6 billion (US$764.7 million) from a third party after a judge found the borrower’s arguments against enforcement of the loan were “fabricated”. In a High Court judgment handed down on Friday and seen by the South China Morning Post, Judge Linda Chan dismissed an injunc...
China’s hypersonic weapons can now use the stars for guidance when satellite systems like GPS or BeiDou are jammed or fail, according to a project led by the Guangdong Aerospace Research Academy that passed its final expert review on Monday. According to a report published by the academy on August 10, researchers set out to tackle the challenge of developing a star-based navigation system that wou...
At least 14 suspected illegal miners were killed and eight injured when a mine dump collapsed in South Africa’s North West province on Monday night, police said. Search and rescue operations are under way for an unknown number of people who may still be trapped at the site near Rustenburg, provincial police commissioner Arthur Peter Adams said. The collapse occurred as the miners were digging f...
Hungarian lawmakers on Tuesday approved former supreme court chief Andras Baka, a critic of Viktor Orban who was fired during the ex-premier’s time in power, as the country’s next head of state. The post became vacant following the contested removal last month of the previous president, an Orban ally, as pro-EU conservative Prime Minister Peter Magyar pushes to loosen his predecessor’s lingering h...
In a landmark change to Lebanon’s penal system, the country’s parliament on Tuesday approved legislation abolishing the death penalty, replacing it with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour, the state-run National News Agency reported. The vote makes Lebanon the first Arab country to formally abolish the death penalty. Justice Minister Adel Nassar, who attended the parliamentary session, ...
As the United States and China consolidate their dominance in artificial intelligence, attention is turning to whether Europe can carve out a distinct third pole – a “G3” – or remain in Washington’s technological orbit. The race is rapidly evolving into a contest over international order. In June, Washington signed up 10 more partners for its Pax Silica framework – designed to secure supply chains...
A nuclear plant in northern France shut down three reactors after a swarm of jellyfish clogged pumps used to cool the units, energy group EDF said on Tuesday. Three reactors were taken offline on Monday and output at a fourth was cut by half, EDF said in a statement, leaving just one operating at full capacity. A sixth reactor was already offline for scheduled maintenance. “This situation has no i...
Parents can submit online consent forms from Monday for their children’s seasonal flu vaccinations under a school outreach programme, with Hong Kong authorities seeking to simplify procedures. The Centre for Health Protection said on Tuesday that a digital consent system would be introduced on the eHealth mobile application – the city’s electronic health record platform – for the coming school yea...
The “long peace” is a term coined by Yale professor and Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis in his 1987 book The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. It refers to the fact that, from the end of World War II in 1945 into the 1980s, more than 40 years passed without a third world war between the United States and Soviet Union. For centuries before 1945, great powers fought destru...
A US laboratory that once dominated the field of superconducting magnets is now hoping to buy Chinese technology used in a leading particle accelerator, official Chinese media reported on Tuesday. The US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory once “monopolised” this type of specialised technology, according to Science and Technology Daily. But in May last year it contacted the Chine...
A US laboratory that once dominated the field of superconducting magnets is now hoping to buy Chinese technology used in a leading particle accelerator, official Chinese media reported on Tuesday. The US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory once “monopolised” this type of specialised technology, according to Science and Technology Daily. But in May last year it contacted the Chine...
Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio was hit with a criminal charge on Tuesday over an alleged death threat against the country’s president, a key part of the case against her at her ongoing Senate impeachment trial. The charge of “grave threats” was filed on Tuesday afternoon in a Quezon City courtroom, Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesman Polo Martinez said. It stems from a National Bu...
Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio was hit with a criminal charge on Tuesday over an alleged death threat against the country’s president, a key part of the case against her at her ongoing Senate impeachment trial. The charge of “grave threats” was filed on Tuesday afternoon in a Quezon City courtroom, Department of Justice spokesman Polo Martinez said. It stems from a National Bureau o...
Alibaba Group Holding is asking app users to open their wallets for its artificial intelligence office assistant, as the Chinese technology giant tests whether businesses and consumers are ready to pay for its digital assistant. The e-commerce giant’s Qwen app now offers three membership tiers for the assistant, with annual plans ranging from 200 yuan (US$29.60) to 1,499 yuan for its flagship vers...
Alibaba Group Holding is asking app users to open their wallets for its artificial intelligence office assistant QwenWork, as the Chinese technology giant tests whether businesses and consumers are ready to pay for its digital assistant. The e-commerce giant’s Qwen app now offers three membership tiers for QwenWork, with annual plans ranging from 200 yuan (US$29.6) to 1,499 yuan for its flagship v...
Hong Kong authorities have launched a search in waters west of the city for a man believed to have fallen overboard from a sightseeing vessel travelling between Shekou and the Hong Kong–Macau–Zhuhai Bridge. The operator of the cruise, which had departed from Shekou in neighbouring Shenzhen for a sightseeing trip of the mega bridge, reported the incident at around 3pm on Tuesday after crew members ...
