The coastguard rescued the crew of an Indian-flagged commercial ship that sank in the Red Sea on Tuesday after an attack, a local official in the Yemeni city of Mokha said, with New Delhi condemning the “unprovoked” aggression. Yemen’s internationally recognised government blamed the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for the attack, according to the official Saba news agency. Last month, the Houthis declared a Red Sea maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude, and have...

Latin American countries should resist pressure to choose between the United States and China and use their vast reserves of lithium, copper and other strategic resources to strengthen their negotiating power, according to a high-level commission co-chaired by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Colombian president Ivan Duque. But the commission acknowledges that the region’s room for manoeuvre is sharply constrained in security, technology and critical infrastructure, areas in...

Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russia of committing a war crime after a video was released showing a drone chasing down and wounding a vegetable seller in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Footage released by Ukrainian police shows the drone pursuing a man around a van being used as a street stand before exploding ‌as he dives for cover behind the vehicle. Police said the man in his 50s survived but suffered shock and shrapnel injuries. Ukrainian officials later identified him only as a...

It started with Instagram posts that suggested Spain’s border with Morocco was opening up. Then came Facebook users tracking coastguard patrols and TikTok videos showing where to swim. After many shares and comments, thousands of Moroccans became convinced that Europe was suddenly within reach. Within hours, young people began heading towards the border with the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa. Packed buses rolled into the neighbouring Moroccan city of Fnideq. Regional trains filled...

US senators voted along party lines on Tuesday to advance US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer as attorney general after he formally scrapped a controversial US$1.8 billion fund created through the administration’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by the president. Todd Blanche, who became deputy attorney general after Trump took office, has been serving as acting attorney general since his predecessor, Pam Bondi, resigned in April. The closely scrutinised Senate Judiciary Committee...

An 89-year-old patient at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital is highly likely to have contracted legionnaires’ disease after drinking water from a contaminated dispenser, health authorities have said. The Centre for Health Protection confirmed on Tuesday that samples from devices dispensing cooled boiled water at the private hospital in Happy Valley tested positive for Legionella pneumophila at levels far above the safety threshold for high‑risk areas of hospitals. Genetic testing found that...

More American titans of artificial intelligence are describing Chinese open-weight models as better for AI safety and security than closed-source models, challenging the long-standing claim by US closed-source AI model developers such as Anthropic that open-source models present a threat to society. “From what I’m seeing, I think open-weight models seem safer to me than closed-weight models,” AI pioneer Andrew Ng, the former head of Google Brain and former chief scientist at Baidu, said at the...