Author: stingfm

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘Time is ripe’: why China is eyeing another vast canal […]

US President Donald Trump on Thursday revoked a landmark scientific finding underpinning US regulations to curb planet-warming pollution, marking his biggest rollback of climate policy to date. The repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” was paired with the immediate elimination of greenhouse gas standards on automobiles. But it also places a host […]

The US and Iran may soon be taking tentative steps towards a new nuclear deal, following intensive diplomatic efforts by the Gulf monarchies and Turkey to prevent a destructive regional war. With US President Donald Trump indicating a clear preference for diplomacy over aggression, Washington appears to have dropped proposals to pursue regime change in […]

For a few hours on Wednesday, the sleepy airport of El Paso, Texas, became a sudden flashpoint for confusion. Late Tuesday night, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a terse notice to pilots that airspace in the area would close – for an unprecedented 10 days – due to “special security reasons”. And then almost as […]

A Netherlands court has upheld the suspension of Zhang Xuezheng, former CEO of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, and ordered an investigation into the company’s governance – another setback for Chinese parent company Wingtech. “The Enterprise Chamber … acknowledges that Nexperia faced complex dilemmas due to geopolitical developments. However, this does not mean that an investigation should […]

Russia sustained around 9,000 more battlefield losses in Ukraine than it was able to replace last month, according to assessments from Western officials, signalling progress for Ukraine’s ambition to inflict heavier damage on the front line. Russian forces were unable to achieve significant gains on the ground in January even as they sustained heavy losses, […]

Hong Kong’s pressing demographic challenges demand tailored, well-considered civil service policies. However, the proposal put forward in recent Legislative Council debates on population policy to raise the retirement age for all civil servants to 65 offers no viable solution to these issues. This one-size-fits-all approach overlooks the civil service’s flexible retirement frameworks and works against […]

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday he had escaped an assassination attempt hours earlier, after months of warnings about an alleged plot by drug traffickers to target him. On Monday night, Petro’s helicopter was unable to land at his destination on the Caribbean coast because of fears that unspecified people “were going to shoot” […]

Authorities on Tuesday released video of an armed ⁠man in a ski mask tampering with the doorbell camera at the Arizona home of US television journalist Savannah Guthrie’s elderly mother shortly before she was abducted nine days earlier in a presumed kidnapping for ransom. Retrieval of the images came hours before another major break in […]

Federal prosecutors failed to bring charges Tuesday against six Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to refuse illegal orders, outraging US President Donald Trump, who had called for jail time, US media reported. Sources told The New York Times and The Washington Post that a federal grand jury – composed of local citizens in Washington […]