As the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump fades in the rear-view mirror, marked by anaemic deliverables, poor transparency and missed opportunities, analysts and former US officials point to another disappointment: the world’s most consequential relationship has become inordinately dependent on the two nations’ top leaders. Trump’s May China trip, the first by a US president in nearly a decade, produced vague and contradictory readouts, puffed up promises,...

A German court on Friday jailed for life a Saudi psychiatrist who killed six people and wounded more than 300 when he drove a rented SUV through a crowded Christmas market in 2024. Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, 51 – an anti-Islam activist and adherent to right-wing conspiracy theories – listened to the verdict from inside a bulletproof glass box, his hands shackled. He was convicted of six counts of murder and 338 counts of attempted murder by the court in the eastern city of Magdeburg. Judges...

Former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty on Friday to illegally retaining classified information, sealing a deal with federal prosecutors that could allow him to avoid a prison term. Bolton, who became an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump after serving in the Republican’s first administration, is scheduled to be sentenced on October 28 by US District Judge Theodore Chuang in Greenbelt, Maryland. Bolton, 77, pleaded guilty to a single count of...

Hong Kong authorities have penalised an Education Bureau staff member over a Primary One admission allocation blunder after human error was found to be involved, with the officer to be denied a pay rise and transferred to other roles. The government on Friday revealed the results of its investigation into the incident on June 2 when parents received SMS notifications about their children’s primary school allocations, a day before the official announcement. The bureau’s hotline was flooded with...

The first scientific ship built by private interests in China is still waiting for its first assignment after it launched last month near Wenling, in Zhejiang province, on the east coast, according to Chinese media reports. The 82 metre-long (269-foot), 3,500-tonne Haiying Jiake research vessel was built with 150 million yuan (US$22 million) raised by 37 Zhejiang fishermen. It is designed to operate anywhere in the world’s oceans, including in thin sea ice, and support research ranging from...

China is establishing an identity system for artificial intelligence agents, as part of new national standards released on Friday to regulate the next frontier of autonomous technology. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) unveiled the standard for “Artificial Intelligence Agent Interconnection”, aiming to establish a “closed-loop system” with a unified identity management framework for all AI agents, according to a report from state broadcaster China Central Television...

Hong Kong’s civil service chief has pledged to deliver a “reasonable and attractive” pay adjustment once the economy and public finances improve, following the legislature’s approval of a flat 2 per cent pay rise for civil servants this year. The Legislative Council’s finance committee on Friday scrutinised HK$6 billion (US$765 million) in spending for the annual pay adjustment for civil servants and associated provisions for subvented organisations, after an earlier decision by the city’s top...