Three once high-flying brothers convicted of exploiting their wealth and access to luxury real estate to drug and rape dozens of women were sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in prison. US District Judge Valerie E. Caproni announced the punishment for Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander – known collectively as the Alexander Brothers – after 11 accusers spoke in court. “Your conduct was monstrous,” the judge told the men as she announced the sentences, saying their insistence that they have been...

In September, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unveiled the city’s first five-year plan along with his policy address, highlighting Hong Kong’s strategic role in promoting the greater use of the yuan outside mainland China as a key priority. In the second part of a four-part series on the globalisation of the yuan, Daisy Wu examines Hong Kong’s evolution from an offshore reservoir into a self-sustaining yuan ecosystem. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who cross the border between mainland...

Several women in US President Donald Trump’s circle have come under the media spotlight in recent weeks, from Karoline Leavitt leaving her position as the White House press secretary in August, to her successor Katie Zacharia being fired after five days and a single press conference. Susan Dell’s recent meeting with Trump in the Oval Office also caused an internet frenzy after people speculated that she had undergone botched plastic surgery. View this post on...

Eswatini probably does not register on most people’s mental maps. Its relatively recent name might sound unfamiliar as many people still know it as Swaziland. That it demands attention from pundits like yours truly has much to do with it being the only African country that still formally recognises Taiwan. It is also the continent’s only absolute monarchy. The two facts are closely connected. Recognising Taipei makes little sense when every one of eSwatini’s neighbours recognises Beijing, but it...

Alibaba has won a preliminary court order blocking a US restriction that drove away its Washington lobbyists, after a federal judge found the Chinese technology giant was likely to succeed in challenging the measure on free-speech grounds. US District Judge Eumi K. Lee ruled on Monday that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence to justify the restriction, which effectively forces lobbying firms to choose between representing Alibaba and clients seeking Pentagon...

The 2027 US defence bill, covering more than US$1 trillion in proposed defence spending, will be one of the most closely watched pieces of legislation when Congress returns after the midterm elections, with efforts to counter China running through nearly every corner of the text. The US House of Representatives passed its version of the bill, known as the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), in July. The bill faces a tougher path in the US Senate, where a July procedural vote to begin...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rival Gadi Eisenkot each vowed on Wednesday to form a government after both came up short in the first election since the October 7, 2023 attack traumatised the country. Voters turned out Tuesday in the highest numbers in decades to give their verdict on the divisive rule of Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has pushed the country sharply to the right and unleashed a wave of wars in response to the Hamas attack. Exit polls showed...

A dinosaur that looks like a miniature T. rex is now one of the world’s most expensive fossils. The rare skeleton of a Nanotyrannus – recently confirmed to be a distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, not just a young specimen – sold for US$47.3 million to a mystery buyer at auction in New York on Tuesday, according to Sotheby’s. The auction house had expected it to fetch anywhere from US$6 to US$9 million. The blockbuster price tag for “Jodi”, as the skeleton is nicknamed, makes it the...

DNA connects serial killer Ted Bundy to the death of a Utah teenager, authorities announced on Tuesday, exactly 52 years after her body was discovered in the woods by a hunter. Bundy has been dead since 1989, but the tally of his confirmed victims continues to grow due to advances in DNA testing. He killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states in the 1970s, and many more escaped or survived with injuries. Investigators are satisfied that Bundy was responsible for killing 17-year-old...

Pope Leo’s lung cancer diagnosis and surgery has affected how Catholics view his health and papacy, the Vatican’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, in an unusual acknowledgement by one of the Church’s most senior officials. “It’s a bit of ‌a game changer,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher told journalists at an event in Rome. Leo, 71, had part of one lung removed in surgery on October 13. His doctors have said the cancer was localised and had not spread, and the pope will not require further...

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has left the country ⁠for the United States after losing Sunday’s ⁠presidential election, three sources said on Tuesday, with the ⁠US State Department due to grant him and his family entry visas. Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left Brazil after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports. The ruling relates to a money-laundering probe in which he denies wrongdoing. The location of...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended Washington’s oil agreement in Venezuela as an alternative to Chinese and Russian involvement, pushing back against criticism from opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Rubio said most of the oilfields controlled by the company partnering with Washington had previously been held or operated by Chinese or Russian firms. He argued that the agreement would help revive production while securing US access to reserves in...

At Texas’ dusty Concordia Cemetery, grass grows over graves in a 140-year-old Chinese burial ground. Some headstones have been stolen or vandalised; others have been marked by flat concrete slabs etched with names in Chinese and English. The slabs were harder to steal than traditional headstones. Still other graves have no visible markers. “I don’t think many people go out there,” says Linda Chew, a retired judge in El Paso, the state’s sixth-largest city. Yet interest in the history of the...

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s re-election marks a turning point for Latin America and US-Latin American relations, said Chile’s former top envoy to China, who predicted a slowing of Washington’s regional push. “I do think the re-election of President Lula marks a major turning point in Latin America and in US-Latin American relations, while also having a broader significance for the Global South,” said Jorge Heine, who served as Chile’s ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017 and...

Israel continued to commit genocide in Gaza after last ⁠October’s US-brokered ceasefire in the enclave, a ⁠UN commission said in a report published on Monday ⁠that Israel dismissed as part of a “misinformation campaign”. The report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, examined violations against Palestinian civilians, including children, since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has begun his state visit to China in the eastern province of Anhui, spotlighting a growing trend among visiting foreign leaders to look well beyond Beijing. Steinmeier arrived in the provincial capital Hefei early on Tuesday to begin a five-day state visit, marking his first trip to China in nearly eight years and confirming an exclusive report by the South China Morning Post earlier this month. When foreign dignitaries bypass Beijing for provincial...

⁠Two men were charged ⁠on Tuesday under Britain’s National Security Act ⁠following last month’s security incident at the RAF Fairford military base, with prosecutors accusing one of them of trying to assist Iranian intelligence operations in Britain. RAF Fairford had been used by US bombers to carry out strikes on Iran, but they were withdrawn ‌on security grounds shortly after five British men were arrested outside the base in southwest England in the early hours of September 27. The...

China’s energy security, now buttressed by internal resilience, has withstood a difficult test from the protracted war in the Middle East, says the head of a global energy industry body. “China has domestic production, it has developed a diversification policy and there is also the possibility to switch around different types of energy,” Andrea Stegher, president of the International Gas Union (IGU), told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday. Stegher said the world’s second-largest economy...

Taiwan’s military has vowed to remain vigilant against mainland Chinese intelligence-gathering activities after Beijing released high-resolution satellite images of the island, raising concerns about its growing surveillance capabilities. “The defence ministry will not lower its vigilance at any time regarding all such satellite imagery and related intelligence collection directed at Taiwan,” Defence Minister Wellington Koo Li-hsiung told reporters on Tuesday. “We will also take appropriate...

A former high-ranking official with China’s securities regulator was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on Tuesday over bribery charges, as Beijing continues its sweeping anti-corruption campaign. Wang Huimin, who served as a member of the Communist Party committee of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) from 2014 to 2019, was found to have taken more than 436 million yuan (US$65 million) in bribes. “The amount involved was especially large and caused especially heavy...