A cyberattack on leading Hong Kong appliance distributor Shun Hing Group has compromised the personal information of more than 1 million people, according to the city’s privacy watchdog. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said on Thursday that it had launched an investigation into the incident after receiving a data breach report from Shun Hing Group on March 23. The latest information provided by the company suggested that the personal data of as many as 1.05 million...

Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee, who publicly recounted being abducted and detained by mainland Chinese authorities in 2015, has died at the age of 70 after a years-long battle with lung cancer, according to Taiwanese media. Local media reported that Lam, who moved to Taiwan in 2019, was admitted to Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei on Tuesday, but his condition worsened and he fell into a coma. He was pronounced dead on Thursday evening. Last year, he disclosed that his lung adenocarcinoma...

The United States posted weaker-than-expected job growth in June as new data showed the labour market is facing headwinds ahead of the testing midterm election for President Donald Trump’s Republicans. Total nonfarm payroll employment grew by 57,000 and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.2 per cent, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) said in a statement on Thursday. After months of seesawing growth and contraction, the US job market posted strong gains in the last three months, but...

Fresh footage has offered the first look at China’s truck-mounted electromagnetic catapult launching a drone, with its developer unveiling details of this large family of containerised weapon systems. The footage shows three eight-wheeled flat-top trucks driving on to what appears to be an airfield runway. Once aligned and connected via mechanical hinges, they form a continuous platform, along which a fixed-wing propeller drone accelerates and takes off. The Beijing Institute of Technology’s...

Rebels in Indonesia’s restive easternmost region of Papua on Thursday shot ⁠dead an American pilot and ⁠set a civilian plane on fire in ⁠what a spokesperson for a local separatist group described as a “message” to the US and Indonesian governments. A low-level battle for independence from Indonesia has long raged in the resource-rich western half of Papua, where attacks by independence fighters have grown deadlier and more ‌frequent as they have procured better weaponry. Sebby Sambom, a...

The United States’ reported plan to ban foreign-made inverters – a move likely aimed at curbing reliance on China – would be difficult to implement and harmful to local industry, Chinese industry insiders have warned. Washington is working on a plan to ban foreign inverters – a vital component used in renewable power systems – over national security concerns, Reuters reported on Tuesday, with a draft potentially set to be published by the end of the year. China dominates the global market for...

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering Latin American relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘I will sell to someone else’: Brazil’s Lula hits back at US after China beef win Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva thanked China for clearing the country’s beef of foot-and-mouth disease and fired a barb at US President Donald Trump, saying “I will sell to someone else”,...