Lawmakers are calling for a failed attack on the Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora, Illinois, to be investigated as a hate crime. On October 11, 2026, as hundreds of Hindu worshippers gathered for the first day of Navaratri, a celebrationover nine nights of the divine feminine, a 19-year-old man traveled to the Hindu temple, […]

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A truckers’ protest in southern Italy has halted the production of the famed buffalo mozzarella, causing an estimated loss of €3 million (US$3.37 million) in just 24 hours as the milk cannot reach dairies in the Naples region and the finished cheese cannot reach customers, an official said. The week-long strike by truck drivers over the high cost of diesel driven up by the Iran war has also blocked deliveries of other basic goods to supermarkets and left fuel pumps empty in much of southern...

Five months after its founding, India’s Cockroach Janta Party, known as the CJP, has revealed what youth-led democratic movements can achieve – and how hard they are to sustain. The movement was formed in May 2026 to protest the government’s cancellation of medical school entrance exams and after India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant likened unemployed […]

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A federal judge on Thursday ordered US President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his US$10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by December 11. The order from US Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett came as lawyers for the British broadcaster complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Charles Tobin, the lawyer for the BBC, said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff”. He noted there was an agreed-upon date of October...

Beijing has slammed “irresponsible remarks” by Britain after a UK report said Hong Kong’s national security law had further diminished the openness that underpinned the city’s success. In the United Kingdom’s latest six-month monitoring report on Hong Kong, released on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said he was “deeply concerned and disturbed” by the continued imprisonment of former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who was jailed for 20 years over national security offences. “We continue...

A report released on Wednesday warns that the investment boom in artificial intelligence is a financial bubble that is “primed to pop” and harm working-class Americans if lawmakers don’t take concrete steps to shield them from the damage. The report, produced by Open Markets Institute and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, warns that Big […]

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[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Why Children Need More Than Screens to Master the Future Hong Kong is moving decisively into the age of artificial intelligence in education. The government has committed significant funding to digital education, supporting schools in purchasing AI tools, digital resources and related training. The message from policymakers is clear: our children must learn to master technology. They are right. But true mastery requires...

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg will get a new chunk of shares in the company he founded, and in return, he has agreed to stay in California, where the company is headquartered, for at least eight more years. It is partly a financial carrot intended to keep Zuckerberg in California, where voters in November will decide whether to approve a temporary tax on wealth held by billionaires who live in the state. Meta announced the deal on Wednesday in a securities filing that coincided with its...

The Philippine ambassador to the United States signalled possible meetings of the “Squad” bloc ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathering in Manila, as Washington confirmed that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue would hold its first leaders’ summit in more than two years on the sidelines of the regional talks. An informal defence grouping, the “Squad” forms part of a US-led regional strategy to counter China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region. It comprises the US...

Hong Kong is significantly lagging behind its neighbours and ranks near the bottom in meeting the growing demand for artificial intelligence supply chains, according to a major index evaluating key developments across the Greater Bay Area. The finding is part of the Greater Bay Area Industry Development Index 2026, jointly released on Thursday by think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation and Dah Sing Bank. The index evaluated the performance of the 11 cities in the bay area in key sectors including...

Hong Kong won a gold medal at the Asian Para Games for the second day in a row after swimmer Chan Yui-lam defended her 100m butterfly (S14) crown on Thursday. Chan, 23, stormed to gold at Nagoya City General Gymnasium in one minute and 5.19 seconds to finish ahead of host swimmer Aira Kinoshita, who finished in 1:05.56. Fellow Hongkonger Lau Chiu-yee took bronze in 1:07.39. The victory for the regional and Asian Para Games record-holder added to her success earlier this week when she took home...

Organisations in Singapore have been urged to immediately fix two critical security flaws in a widely used programming language amid reports of widespread attempts by hackers to exploit the vulnerabilities. The flaws in PHP, which powers many websites and online services, could allow attackers to take control of web servers, steal data or disrupt services without needing login credentials, Singapore’s Commissioner of Cybersecurity Gwenda Fong said on Thursday. “The threat is immediate,” Fong,...

Unitree Robotics is developing a “self-evolving” feedback loop designed to allow humanoid robots to write code, run simulations and improve their real-world performance independently, founder Wang Xingxing said, in a move that mirrors a broader push towards “self-improving” artificial intelligence. Speaking on Thursday at a physical AI conference hosted by Unitree in Hangzhou, Wang unveiled the project, dubbed “Unitree Rehearsal”, which he called the company’s most important initiative of the...

The European Union’s perception that China is yielding to its pressure tactics on trade is a “serious misjudgment”, as Beijing proved during last year’s tariff war with the United States that it will not back down from a confrontation, a former Chinese diplomat has warned. Beijing’s willingness to compromise during trade talks with the EU earlier this month – where the two sides agreed a quota on Chinese hybrid car exports to Europe – has been taken by some in Brussels as a sign that their...

Lead cast: Nam Ji-hyun, Kim Jae-young South Korea finds itself at an interesting juncture in its social evolution in the mid-2020s. Following the success of works such as the 2016 book Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 and its hit 2019 film adaptation, which brought the country’s gender inequality into sharp focus, the imbalance remains stubbornly stark. People now recognise this imbalance and are unafraid to label it for what it is – “patriarchy” is no longer a dirty word. Yet change has been slow. South...

Alexandra Eala crashed out in the Ningbo Open last 16 on Thursday as world No 1 Elena Rybakina reached the quarter-finals on her return from injury when opponent Polina Kudermetova retired. Top seed and defending champion Rybakina was cruising 5-0 in eastern China when the world No 105 from Uzbekistan called it quits because of injury. Earlier, Philippine history-maker Eala suffered a battling straight-sets defeat to Diana Shnaider, the Russian world No 13 winning 7-5, 6-4 to book a...

This month alone, Europe has threatened China with a trade “kill switch”, rebuked it in parliament, sent its trade commissioner on a much-trumpeted trip to Beijing and announced three new economic security instruments. The sequence exposed a European Union that has no clear goal on China, no hierarchy of priorities and has reached no agreement on what it wants from Beijing or on what it would pay to get it. China has built its European policy around this vacuum. Its method rewards patience:...

Nasdaq-listed fintech company Solana and healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson are among the latest batch of enterprises in artificial intelligence, healthtech and advanced manufacturing to establish or expand operations in Hong Kong, bringing in more than HK$10 billion (US$1.28 billion) in investment to the city. The 18 enterprises signed agreements on Thursday with the Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES), a government unit under the Financial Secretary’s Office tasked with...

Hong Kong’s top banking regulator has called for greater innovation in the city’s financial system to help address “pain points” in the real economy, as the city works with mainland Chinese and Asia-Pacific partners to navigate a host of sustainability, geopolitical and other challenges. “True innovation in finance is not simply about chasing novelty; it’s about transforming conventional financial tools into efficient solutions,” said Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary...

Less than two weeks after Brussels and Beijing struck a surprise deal to avert an escalating trade dispute, their fragile rapprochement has descended into a battle over who blinked first. In Brussels and Berlin, officials are emboldened by what they consider proof that collective EU pressure can force Chinese concessions. Rather than resting on their laurels, they are cooking up a fresh batch of trade restrictions. Beijing, on the other hand, has bristled at the idea that it can be strong-armed...