WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised President Donald Trump’s foreign policy record in a Republican National Convention speech yesterday that Democrats criticised as a breach of protocol and perhaps the law. Speaking in a recorded video from a Jerusalem rooftop during an official trip, Pompeo, a Trump appointee […]
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WASHINGTON: First lady Melania Trump urged voters to re-elect her husband during a impassioned speech to the Republican National Convention yesterday that offered sympathy for victims of the coronavirus pandemic and a plea for racial understanding. On the second day of the convention with 70 days to go until the […]
HONG KONG: Two prominent Hong Kong opposition lawmakers were arrested today in a police operation focused on last year’s huge anti-government protests, the latest move in a widening crackdown against the city’s democracy camp. Lam Cheuk-ting and Ted Hui were detained after raids on their homes early Wednesday morning according […]
China’s Defence Ministry said the U-2 flew without permission over a no-fly zone in the northern military region where live fire drills were taking place, “seriously interfering in normal exercise activities”. China has lodged “stern representations” with the United States, accusing it of sending a US U-2 reconnaissance plane into […]
An enlarged meeting of the politburo of the Workers Party took place amid a pandemic that is putting additional pressure on the North Korean economy, battered by recent border closures and flood damage. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for prevention efforts against the novel coronavirus and a […]
Even Chinese companies’ pre-Covid attempts to extricate themselves from investments are being tripped up by the pandemic. Chinese buyers have not only stopped snapping up iconic overseas assets, the coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the targets of deals that defined a headier era. Whereas some prolific acquirers such as HNA Group […]
HONG KONG: A Hong Kong court again denied bail today to the first person charged with inciting separatism and terrorism under a new national security law in the Chinese-ruled city. Tong Ying-kit, 23, had carried a sign reading “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” and drove his motorbike into […]
JOLO: At least 14 people were killed and 75 wounded—including members of the security forces and civilians—in twin bombings today involving a suicide attacker on a southern Philippine island that is a stronghold of Islamist militants, officials said. The apparently coordinated attacks happened in Jolo in Muslim-majority Sulu, where government-backed […]
VIENNA: Austria is expelling a Russian diplomat for breaching the Vienna Convention governing diplomats’ privileges and immunities, an Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said today. “His behaviour is not in accordance with the Vienna Convention,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said, declining to elaborate. The Russian Embassy responded on Twitter by saying: […]
TOKYO: Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, visited a Tokyo hospital today, as concerns grew over his ability to continue in his post, because of health issues and fatigue from handling the coronavirus crisis. If Abe is incapacitated, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who doubles as finance minister, would take […]