Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbles nearly 9% on Monday as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 8% and South Korea trading temporarily halted amid Trump tariff concerns
Hong Kong stocks have plummeted more than 9% at open, while Singapore stocks dropped over 7%, according to reports.
Hong Kong and Chinese stocks dived on Monday as markets around the world crumbled in the face of the widening global trade war and fears it will unleash a deep recession, Reuters says.
Continue reading...Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbles nearly 9% on Monday as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 8% and South Korea trading temporarily halted amid Trump tariff concerns
Hong Kong stocks have plummeted more than 9% at open, while Singapore stocks dropped over 7%, according to reports.
Hong Kong and Chinese stocks dived on Monday as markets around the world crumbled in the face of the widening global trade war and fears it will unleash a deep recession, Reuters says.
Continue reading...Officials reportedly didn’t publicly acknowledge death until inquiries were made about woman, 52, who overstayed visa
A woman being detained in Arizona by US border patrol for overstaying her visa has died by suicide, according to Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.
The woman, a 52-year-old Chinese national, had first been picked up in California after it had been determined that she had overstayed her B1/B2 visitor visa, Jayapal said in a statement. She was later sent to the Yuma station in Arizona where she stayed until her death on 29 March.
Continue reading...Labor and Coalition would both end Chinese company Landbridge’s long-term lease of strategically important asset
The Chinese company that controls the Port of Darwin has accused Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton of treating it like “a political football” in the middle of a federal election campaign.
Federal Labor and the Coalition have both announced that if elected on 3 May they would end Landbridge’s long-term lease of the Port of Darwin, arguing it is strategically important and should be controlled by an Australian entity.
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Continue reading...Released court statement says alleged Chinese spy helped draft private letters to Chinese president
The Duke of York sent letters directly to China’s president, the prince’s former senior adviser told a special immigration tribunal, with an alleged Chinese spy advising him on how to write them.
Dominic Hampshire, who worked for Andrew from 2019-22, said Andrew had “always had a communication channel” with Xi Jinping that was “accepted” and may even have been encouraged by Buckingham Palace and the late queen.
Continue reading...PM says two options on table: for an Australian-owned company to take control, or for port to return to being a government asset
The Labor government is on the hunt for a buyer for the port of Darwin despite the Chinese-owned company who holds the lease insisting it is not for sale.
Anthony Albanese revealed the plan after calling in to local Darwin radio on Friday afternoon in a deliberate attempt to get ahead of a similar announcement the Coalition made on Saturday.
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Continue reading...Beijing continues drills in Taiwan strait, practising hitting key ports and energy infrastructure
The US has accused China of putting the region’s security at risk after it launched a second day of military drills targeting Taiwan with a rehearsal blockade and attack.
The China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began the joint drills without notice on Tuesday morning, sending 76 aircraft and more than 20 navy and coastguard ships, including the Shandong carrier group, to positions around Taiwan’s main island.
Continue reading...Defence secretary’s trip to Asia shows the Trump administration is engaged with the region, but analysts warn Taipei to tread carefully
On Tuesday China’s military launched joint drills around Taiwan, sending ships, planes and some bizarre propaganda videos across the strait to both warn and punish Taiwan’s government over what Beijing calls “separatist activity”.
The purported provocation was recent assertiveness by Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, who in March designated China a “foreign hostile force” and announced 17 measures to counter its espionage and influence operations.
Continue reading...Taiwan says it has detected nearly 20 vessels off its coast as Beijing orders large scale sea and air exercises and calls leaders in Taipei ‘parasites’
China has launched large-scale military drills around Taiwan, accusing its leaders of being “separatists” and “parasites” who were pushing the democratically run island into war.
The drills, accompanied by a propaganda campaign, were launched without warning on Tuesday morning. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said they were a “stern warning” to Taiwan’s democratically elected government over what Beijing claims is separatist activity.
Continue reading...President promises he will be ‘very kind’ but critics warn his strategy risks triggering chain reaction and global trade war
As Donald Trump prepared to unveil a swathe of reciprocal tariffs, global markets braced and some Republican senators voiced their opposition to a strategy that critics warn risks a global trade war, provoking retaliation by major trading partners such as China, Canada and the European Union.
The US president said on Monday he would be “very kind” to trading partners when he unveils further tariffs this week, potentially as early as Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Wettest March day for 15 years in some parts of northern Australian state, while storms and hail hit Mediterranean
More heavy rain has hit Queensland, Australia, just weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Alfred. Much of north and central Queensland was put under severe weather alert for heavy rainfall earlier this week, as six-hourly rainfall totals of 30-60mm were anticipated, with the risk of seeing up to 120mm locally in this period.
In the north-west of the state, this rain caused the Haughton River to rise rapidly, with water levels reaching 2.68 metres on Wednesday night, exceeding the 2.5-metre major flood level.
Continue reading...Canadian PM says Donald Trump has permanently altered relations, as countries around the globe insist import taxes are harmful to all, including Washington
Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.
Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.
Continue reading...Soldiers had worked for ‘extremely sensitive and important units’ and ‘their acts betrayed the country’, Taipei court says
A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China.
The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several months” between 2022 and 2024, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Senior officials warn nations including China, Pakistan and Iran could attempt to subvert vote with sophisticated tools
The spectre of interference by India has already rocked the early days of Canada’s federal election, with officials warning that sophisticated efforts from other hostile nations are expected in the coming weeks.
As Canadians prepare to cast ballots on 28 April, senior officials say that India, China, Pakistan and Iran are all expected to make efforts to subvert the national vote through increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns.
Continue reading...Ted Hui received letter offering reward for information about his family after China accused Australia of interfering with its internal affairs
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has described another threatening letter sent to an exiled Hong Kong dissident in Australia as “reprehensible”, a “threat to our national sovereignty” and “the safety and security of Australians”.
The anonymous letter, mailed from Hong Kong and sent to Ted Hui’s Adelaide office, offered his colleagues $203,000 for information on his whereabouts and his family. It arrived just days after China’s foreign ministry accused the Albanese government of interfering with its internal affairs.
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Continue reading...Annual report says Beijing making ‘steady but uneven’ progress on capabilities to capture Taiwan
China remains the United States’ top military and cyber threat, according to a new report by US intelligence agencies that said Beijing was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture Taiwan.
China has the ability to hit the United States with conventional weapons, compromise US infrastructure through cyber-attacks, and target its assets in space, as well as seeking to displace the US as the top AI power by 2030, the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community said.
Continue reading...Employees who may have to return home risk death or imprisonment at hands of authoritarian governments
Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. The agency had around 3,500 employees with an annual budget of $886m in 2024.
Continue reading...A broad trough has dragged in warm, moist air and offers perfect ingredients for heavy rainfall and even supercells
Northern parts of Australia have been under a flood warning this weekend, with further flooding set to bring havoc to south-eastern parts of the Northern Territory and western Queensland early this week. A broad trough – an area of locally lower pressure – has been moving across northern Australia, dragging in warm, moist air from the Gulf of Carpentaria and providing the perfect ingredients for the formation of severe thunderstorms, and even supercells.
More than 70mm (2.75in) of rain fell in an hour under the slow-moving storms over the weekend in what is usually an arid, low rainfall zone with a desert/grassland climate classification. Some parts of the region have sparse observation data, but some local stations have been able to record more than 100mm within 24 hours, with 132mm of rain at Marion Downs, Queensland.
Continue reading...Meeting comes as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington
Republican senator Steve Daines, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Sunday, as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington.
The meeting marks the first time a US politician has visited China since Trump took office in January. Earlier this month, China’s ministry of foreign affairs promised that China will “fight to the end” with the US in a “tariff war, trade war or any other war”.
Continue reading...The moves that barred the media mogul’s choice of lawyer are immune from legal challenge, giving the national security committee what one expert called ‘the powers of a police state’
The dwindling freedom in Hong Kong over the past few years has been described as “death by a thousand cuts”. Critics have been jailed, elections have been transformed into “patriots only” affairs, journalists have been harassed and hundreds of thousands of people have left.
This week, an obscure legal development has, in the eyes of some legal experts, inflicted another cut on the city’s once revered legal system.
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