In the first round of Brazil’s elections on Oct. 4, 2026, Flávio Bolsonaro, of the right wing Liberal Party (PL), came in first with 47.03% of the valid votes, compared with 45.16% for the current leftist president and Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The margin was just over 2.2 million votes, […]

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A 65-year-old woman was killed on Tuesday in a shark attack off South Africa’s southeastern coast, police and municipal authorities said, prompting the closure of two beaches. Officers were called to Orient Beach in KuGompo city, formerly East London, at about 7am, where they found the woman’s body, Eastern Cape police spokesperson Col. Siphokazi Mawisa told Associated Press. An inquest has been opened into the death. “The Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality is deeply saddened to confirm that...

British police said on Tuesday that they had rearrested two men on suspicion of assisting Iran’s intelligence service in a suspected plot at a US-run airbase in England last month. Counter Terrorism Policing said the men, a 24-year-old British national and a 25-year-old dual UK-Iranian national, were arrested under the National Security Act. One of the suspects was first arrested on September 27, when the suspected plot against the US-run base at RAF Fairford took place. The airbase in western...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Tuesday that the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue would meet in the Philippine capital next month, marking the group’s first summit in more than two years, just days before US President Donald Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, China. “It’s been agreement now that we’re going to do it; we’re going to do it in Manila, at the Asean conference,” Rubio said in an interview with Indian news channel CNN-News18. “We don’t...

France will reinforce police with troops and mount a huge security operation for more protests planned on Saturday, the government said on Tuesday, acknowledging failures in its response to last weekend’s violence. “The deployment next Saturday will be massive,” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said, adding that the immediate priority was to restore order after rioting and looting swept Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities on October 17. In a sometimes rowdy debate, Interior Minister Laurent...

The United States is lulling itself into a “sense of false security” over its military rivalry with China, according to a Republican senator who called for more spending on modern warfare systems and closer cooperation with allies. Speaking at the Hudson Institute after a recent trip to Japan and South Korea, Dave McCormick, a Pennsylvania senator and West Point graduate, claimed up to 90 per cent of US defence spending funded decades-old equipment and technologies. “We convince ourselves; we...

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the design industry, where speed and efficiency have become the norm. But the Hong Kong animated film Another World took a different path. Entirely hand-drawn over seven years, it was selected for the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France — hailed as the “Oscars of the animation world” — and won Best Animated Feature at the Golden Horse Awards...

On January 5, 2025, Saudi Arabia’s then ambassador to Bangladesh, Essa Youssef Essa Al Duhailan, delivered a stark reminder of a lost opportunity. Saudi Aramco, the Kingdom’s state-owned oil giant, had sent high-level delegations to Bangladesh three times between 2016 and 2018 to explore investment opportunities, including an oil refinery. Yet, according to the ambassador, […]

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Protests rarely remain confined to the grievances that first bring people into the streets. When the citizens believe their concerns are being ignored, a grievance over a particular policy or administrative decision can evolve into a broader challenge to the political authority. Consequently, what begins as a demand for correction becomes a question of accountability. […]

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A second batch of land at Hong Kong’s flagship tech hub at the border with mainland China has drawn nine bids, with frontier technology firms and major conglomerates among the tenderers. The Loop Hong Kong Park Company, which operates the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park (HSITP), revealed the results on Tuesday, nearly two months after six bids were received from conglomerates and hi-tech firms for its inaugural land tender at the end of August. Tuesday’s tender covered three...

While US President Donald Trump has said he is open to sitting down with Chinese and Russian counterparts Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the Apec summit, it remains far from certain that the three leaders will actually meet in a few weeks. Observers said much would depend on whether the countries could agree on an agenda, with one expert describing this as a “critical lever”. Russia was set to gain most if the trilateral meeting took place, experts said, as the summit would be a potent symbol...

A Hong Kong-headquartered intergovernmental mediation body has successfully settled an infrastructure dispute in Malaysia and received “more than a dozen” inquiries, its head has revealed on the organisation’s first anniversary. Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, secretary general of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed), told a reception marking the body’s first anniversary that it had wrapped up a case on Tuesday and was handling another. “Our ambition is not simply to build a successful...

The number of people facing acute food insecurity in Afghanistan is set to rise above 19 million this winter, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. The food crisis gripping Afghanistan is projected to affect millions of young children in 2027, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said. More than four million babies and children under six will need treatment for acute malnutrition next year, it warned. Between September and October, 15.9 million people – or nearly one in three Afghans –...

Average sentences for Hong Kong’s gravest child sex crimes have remained below 10 years over the past three decades, far below the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, prompting a call for a sentencing council to issue clearer judicial guidance. Citing data from 401 publicly available judgments between 1990 and 2025, University of Hong Kong law professor Puja Kapai on Tuesday said her research found six offences – including rape, buggery, and unlawful sexual intercourse – carried average prison...

Just days after announcing his departure from Moonshot AI, teen Chinese artificial intelligence prodigy Nathan Chen Guangyu seems to have found his next destination. On Tuesday, Arfur Grok, a widely-watched anonymous social media account that tracks AI talent movements in the US, posted that the former Moonshot AI researcher was joining Discovery Loop, an AI start-up founded by four former Google senior researchers including former chief scientist Jeff Dean. Launched just two months ago, the...

The European Commission has presented an updated strategy for the Arctic as climate change and rapidly melting ice open up the remote but resource-rich region. “With Russia and China increasing their footprint and ambition, the Arctic has become a front line of global power competition,” said European Union foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas on Tuesday. With the new strategy, the commission aims for the EU to keep pace with rivals as new shipping routes and mining opportunities, including for...

The number of contested subsectors in Hong Kong’s powerful Election Committee has doubled compared with 2021, in a move observers said reflected Beijing’s push to foster healthy competition within the pro-establishment camp and strengthen the legitimacy of the body responsible for selecting the city’s next leader. The two-week nomination period ended on Tuesday, with 1,115 hopefuls signing up to run for 982 elected seats across 36 subsectors on the Election Committee. The poll will be held on...

Jay Rooney LOVE TOGETHER - R6 (8) Cracking run on return and can take advantage of a good draw and light weight   Owen Goulding EMBRACES - R9 (9) Drawn well, on a dangerous mark and will get the pace needed to mow them down   Paul Lally PEGAS - R8 (8) Drawn to get the best run in the race from barrier one and can sail through late on   Phillip Woo LOVE TOGETHER - R6 (8) Caught the eye first up and can deliver up in grade off a light weight   Trackwork Spy LOVE TOGETHER - R6 (8) Hit the line well...

China’s hybrid car exports to the European Union tripled in September from a year earlier, with shipments expected to remain elevated before an import cap agreed during recent trade talks takes effect. The country shipped nearly 100,000 hybrid cars to the bloc last month, up 18.9 per cent from August and 204.2 per cent from a year earlier, customs data showed on Tuesday. The surge outpaced a 142.7 per cent year-on-year rise in China’s total exports of passenger cars to the EU. Analysts said the...

Chinese scientists have found evidence that individual neurons can act like powerful minicomputers that enable flexible behaviour such as making decisions. Scientists do not have a complete understanding of how our brains adapt to changing contexts to respond appropriately to sensory information. But by studying mice, the team obtained the first experimental evidence that dendrites – branchlike structures attached to neurons – can integrate learned rules with incoming sensory inputs to drive...