Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Security officials fear UK telcos could run out of vital parts if US pressure disrupts supplies
British security officials have told telecoms operators to ensure they have adequate stockpiles of Huawei equipment owing to fears that US sanctions will disrupt the Chinese firm’s ability to maintain critical supplies, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
This week Katharine Murphy talks with the Australian trade, tourism and investment minister, Simon Birmingham. They discuss the challenges of economic recovery after the bushfires and coronavirus, and address the escalating trade actions from China. Will Birmingham appease an angered Beijing and reverse China’s tariffs? Or will the relationship see a continued decline in civility?
In one of many episodes in the book that reveal the fragile nature of the UK’s relations with the Trump administration, Bolton writes that the president said Tiananmen Square was decades ago and he did not want to jeopardise a potential trade deal with Beijing.
Delhi says Chinese dammed a river and lay in wait for clash in which 20 Indians died
India has accused Chinese troops of meticulously preparing an attack on its soldiers on the treacherous Himalayan border, claiming they erected a tent on the Indian side, dammed a river, brought in machinery and then lay in wait with stones and batons wrapped in barbed wire.
The incident on Monday night, in which 20 Indian soldiers died and 76 were injured, was the worst violence between India and China for 45 years. China has not said whether it sustained any casualties.
Zhang Le, 25 has been waiting for more than two hours outside a car park to be tested for coronavirus. Police officers stand behind a cordon, futilely shouting through loudspeakers for people not to gather in groups. When they are not looking, two women duck under the tape and jump the queue.
An officer tells Zhang and his colleagues, restaurant workers in a shopping mall, to go to the other entrance to the testing centre, set up on the outskirts of a park. They trudge over there only to be turned away again. Nearby, people stand or sit in groups as police try to herd them away.
In Australia, authorities are watching the rise in coronavirus cases in Victoria closely as the state prepares to further ease restrictions from Monday.
Gyms, cinemas, indoor sports centres and concert venues are scheduled to reopen on Monday while cafes, restaurants and pubs will increase capacity from 20 people to 50.
Brazil has passed a total of more than one million coronavirus cases, and nearly 50,000 deaths, according to its health ministry data, in a new low for the world’s second worst-hit country.
Brazil has recorded 1,032,913 confirmed cases, second only to the United States, with 1,206 new deaths reported on Friday to take the total official fatalities to 48,954, the ministry said.
President contradicts top China trade negotiator as Washington questions Beijing Covid-19 outbreak numbers
Donald Trump has renewed his threat to cut ties with China, a day after his diplomats held high-level talks with Beijing and his top US trade negotiator said severing the trade relationship was not a viable option.
Indian media report release came after high-level talks between the India army and the PLA
China has freed 10 Indian soldiers seized in a high-altitude border clash in the Himalayas which left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead, media reports said on Friday.
The release follows several rounds of talks between the two sides in a bid to ease tensions after the battle on Monday, in which scores of troops from the two sides fought with nail-studded batons and hurled rocks at each other.
Damaging revelations may disrupt Trump’s anti-China re-election strategy, but will it change any votes?
The conventional Washington wisdom before Wednesday afternoon was that it was hard to imagine anything that would still have the capacity to shock us about Donald Trump and his presidency.
Then John Bolton’s memoir leaked, with recollections of his time as national security adviser that appeared to have gone beyond parody and just kept travelling.
Hong Kong delegate to top Chinese legislative body says people who breach new law could be sent to mainland if Beijing ‘thinks it necessary’
China’s proposal to take charge of “serious” breaches of the new national security law in Hong Kong will sabotage the city’s autonomy, its rule of law and freedoms and threaten its unique status as an Asian financial hub, analysts say.
China’s parliament passed a plan in late May to impose a national security law on Hong Kong to target “acts and activities” that it sees as threatening national security, including secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference.
Donald Trump was willing to halt criminal investigations to “give personal favors to dictators he liked”, according to a new book written by his former national security adviser John Bolton.
Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.
The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.
If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.
Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.
India shocked by Himalayan border clash in which unarmed troops fought in the dark
The hand-to-hand combat lasted hours, on steep, jagged terrain, with iron bars, rocks and fists. Neither side carried guns. Most of the soldiers killed in the worst fighting between India and China in 60 years lost their footing or were knocked from the narrow Himalayan ridge, plunging to their deaths.
India has reacted with shock and caution to the loss of at least 20 soldiers on its disputed border with China, with images of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, burned in Indian cities.
Chinese embassy in Canberra accuses Australian media of ‘rumours, lies and malicious slanders against China’ that has been picked up by politicians
China has hit back at “baseless accusations” that are “completely rubbish” after Australia accused Beijing of spreading disinformation during the pandemic.
At a press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, the Chinese government spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Australian officials of undermining international efforts to combat the virus.
Protesters in India burned effigies of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and called for boycotts of Chinese goods on Wednesday after a deadly clash at a disputed border site in the western Himalayas left 20 Indian soldiers dead. The deaths were the first since the last major border clash in 1967 between the nuclear-armed neighbours - also the world's two most populous countries - which have been unable to settle the dispute along their lengthy frontier
New coronavirus infections have soared to record highs in six American states, marking a rising tide of cases for a second consecutive week as authorities in Beijing said another 31 people had been infected in a fresh outbreak in China.
Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas all reported their most ever new cases on Tuesday after all-time highs last week and as they continued to reopen their economies. Nevada also reported its highest single-day tally of new cases on Tuesday, up from a previous high on 23 May.
At least 20 died after soldiers fought with clubs and rocks along the disputed border, making de-escalation hard for the nuclear states
The forces of two nuclear weapons states have set about each other with clubs and rocks at one of the most forbidding flashpoints in the world, in a bloody incident that highlights the constant dangers posed by expansionist nationalism.
Julian Hill is looking at the government’s spend on consultants (an evergreen sentence, no matter what political party is in government)
New analysis by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has found that the big four consultancy firms – Deloitte, Ernest&Young, KPMG and PwC – now collectively reap $800m a year in government contracts.
But only 20% of that figure is spent on actual consultancy contracts, meaning the Morrison government is paying top dollar to large consultancy firms to work as contractors doing the day-to-day work of public servants.
The Australia Institute has begun a new campaign to have truth in advertising part of Australia’s political advertising.
An open letter coordinated by the Australia Institute and signed by 29 prominent Australians calls for parliament to pass truth-in-political advertising laws that are nationally consistent, constitutional and uphold freedom of speech.
Signatories to the open letter include former political party leaders and politicians, Dr John Hewson, Cheryl Kernot and Michael Beahan; former supreme court judges, the Hon Anthony Whealy QC, the Hon Paul Stein AM QC and the Hon David Harper AM QC, as well as barristers, community leaders, business people and other prominent Australians.
Beijing and New Zealand had both declared themselves Covid-19-free by mid-June, life returning to an enviable normality of schools and shops, work and human contact. It didn’t last long.
Last week, parts of the Chinese capital went back on a “wartime” footing after a cluster of cases emerged linked to the city’s biggest wholesale food market. Movement restrictions are back and residents have already been warned against leaving the city. Schools are closed.
First loss of life in area in at least 45 years comes amid renewed dispute
Twenty members of India’s armed forces have been killed in a “violent face-off” with Chinese soldiers on their disputed Himalayan border in the worst military crisis between the two countries in nearly 60 years.
The deaths are the first loss of life in the border area since 1975, and come amid a renewed dispute between the two countries in recent weeks. Indian and Chinese soldiers, who often do not carry weapons in the area to avoid escalating conflicts, have brawled, detained each other and deployed forces and equipment in the western Himalayas in recent weeks.