Five United Nations rights experts have urged Canada to take all feasible measures to protect the Sikh activist Moninder Singh, who has been repeatedly warned by the Canadian authorities of credible threats to his life. In a letter to the Canadian government dated June 3, and made public two months later, as per regular procedure, the UN experts raised ...

Lyle Goldstein is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and director of Asia engagement at the Washington think tank Defence Priorities. How do you assess the progress of the Peoples Liberation Armys modernisation drive in the past 10 years and its significance in modern military history? How do ...

Indias property market has gone from strength to strength. All the main sectors continue to perform extremely well. Last year, take-up of shopping centre and warehouse space reached record highs. In the first half of this year, office leasing volumes rose to their second-highest level for the period on record, while new flat sales in the eight largest ...

A group of 25 Democratic-led US states sued US President Donald Trumps administration on Monday, arguing that the presidents latest round of tariffs on goods from 60 trading partners, like most of his earlier sweeping tariffs, exceeds his legal authority to tax imports. The states lawsuit filed in the US Court of International Trade in New York follows ...

President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Ukraines ambassador to the United States, Olha Stefanishyna, in a presidential decree published on Monday. Stefanishyna had been in her job for nearly a year. Her departure had been expected for several weeks. Her departure coincides with a shake-up in recent weeks of top officials, including the replacement of the ...

Colombian prosecutors are investigating allegations that executives of a Chinese state-owned contractor building the Bogota metro demanded cash from a local subcontractor in exchange for releasing payments owed for work on the project, according to an investigation published over the weekend by Semana, the countrys leading news magazine. The consortium ...

Two people have died in the cyclospora outbreak in Michigan, state health officials announced on Monday, the first deaths confirmed in the US related to the microscopic parasite. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said both people had underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by the intestinal illness and dehydration. The ...

The government in Madrid has rejected allegations that it ignored warnings from its intelligence service, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), about a mass arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa. It said on Monday that no intelligence reports had been received warning of a migration crisis on this ...

The hard-right Reform UK party unveiled plans on Monday for, if it wins power, the largest military operation in the Channel since World War II to stop migrants crossing on small boats. The proposal which experts and other political parties promptly rubbished comes days after tens of thousands of migrants entered Spains North African enclave of Ceuta from ...

The US has signed a more than US$3 billion deal with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts, as conflicts in Iran and Ukraine strain stockpiles. The deal, announced by the Pentagon and Northrop on Monday, follows last weeks announcement of a contract for Lockheed worth up to US$58.6 billion ...

About 500 Hong Kong students are getting a taste of army life, with the PLA garrison launching its annual summer camp to instil patriotism and discipline, and teach military skills, among young people. Among the new recruits is Lo Wan-lung, a Form One student at Salesian English School who is attending the two-week camp for the first time. Attracted by the ...

Bertrice Pompe was born in Diego Garcia, situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia, in 1971, making her one of the last Chagossians to enter the world on an island that her family would soon be forced to leave. Some families, like brothers, sisters, were separated, she said. Some went to the Seychelles, some to Mauritius close ...

Beijing has signalled the start of the summer break for Chinas political elite with the announcement of retreats at the seaside resort of Beidaihe. State news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that Cai Qi, the man often referred to as President Xi Jinpings chief of staff, extended sincere greetings to various academics and scientists invited to the resort ...

Doctoral researcher Hu Qi still has about two years left in his programme at the University of Hong Kong, but headhunters are already reaching out to pitch specific jobs and ask when he will graduate. Hu, who specialises in artificial intelligence agent security, is currently interning at a Chinese tech giant where his team leaders regularly ask about his ...

The Philippines latest push for seabed rights in the South China Sea could complicate its efforts as this years Asean chair to build regional consensus, analysts say, adding another layer of complexity to already slow-moving talks on a code of conduct for the disputed waterway. On July 28, Manila delivered an official presentation of its partial submission ...

A Burmese python has gone viral on social media after it was spotted along a busy road in a Hong Kong shopping district on Sunday evening, with an expert saying heavy rain over recent weeks may have forced wild animals into urban areas. The snake was caught on camera by a passing jogger near Causeway Bays Jardine Noonday Gun at around 11pm that day. In the ...

Indonesian rescuers searched for possible missing passengers on Monday after rescuing 231 people from a ferry that caught fire the previous day off the main island of Java, leaving at least five people dead. Passengers described leaping overboard and staying afloat for hours before rescue. The Mutiara Sentosa 2 ferry was travelling from Indonesias ...

Hong Kong authorities have found a 60-year-old woman on a hillside near a cemetery nearly two weeks after she went missing, despite the search being hampered by a typhoon and days of heavy rain. Police said on Monday that Ngan Laiching left her home at Kwong Ming Court in Tseung Kwan O on the morning of July 24 without a mobile phone or an Octopus card. The ...

A British man who kept his mothers body in a freezer for nearly three years while he received almost 80,000 (US$108,000) of her welfare benefits was jailed on Monday. Christopher Phillips, 60, had admitted preventing the lawful and decent burial of his 89-year-old mother Sylvia Phillips after she died in March 2023 until his arrest at their home in ...

In getting into a sexual relationship with his 13-year-old niece, a man sexually exploited her, raped her during staycations and punished her with sex acts when he grew jealous about a schoolmate she was dating. The 38-year-old Singaporean man, who cannot be named to protect the victims identity, was sentenced to 21 years jail and 16 strokes of the cane on ...

With the US-Israel war on Iran entering its sixth month, Chinese policymakers have a multitude of questions weighing on their minds, with two proving particularly thorny according to a prominent economist: how much longer the conflict might last, and whether it will necessitate adjustments to previous plans. While the continuing impact on China might remain ...

The Chinese air force is using an AI-enabled system to draw up battle plans for operations involving more than 100 units, according to a state television documentary. The intelligent strike planning system was designed to help commanders and pilots by prioritising targets, coordinating attack waves and allocating specific tasks to units, the CCTV programme ...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the world at extraordinary speed. It is reshaping manufacturing, finance, healthcare, education, scientific research and even the way governments make decisions. While AI advances at an unprecedented pace, one fundamental question has come to the fore: how to govern intelligence in an interconnected yet increasingly ...

Wuxi AppTec, Asias largest provider of contract pharmaceutical research, posted net income that smashed market expectations in the first half of the year amid strong demand tied to weight-loss and diabetes drugs, as well as gains in its US business. Interim net profit attributable to the owners of the Shanghai-based drug contractor advanced 33.7 per cent to ...

Robbyant, the embodied artificial intelligence division of Ant Group, has begun seeking external funding, becoming the fourth unit of the fintech giant to step up capital-raising efforts. The unit said it was in talks with investors on Monday. As Ant Groups core initiative in embodied intelligence, a Robbyant spokesperson said it would remain focused on ...