A nearly blind refugee from Myanmar missing since his release from a Buffalo jail into the custody of US Border Patrol has been found dead on a downtown street, according to city authorities on Wednesday. Police officers in the upstate New York city located the body of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, on Tuesday evening, the Buffalo Police Department said. Shah Alam had been missing since February 19, when US Border Patrol agents dropped ‌him off at a coffee shop miles from his home following his...

Beijing intervened and helped get charges dropped against three Chinese scientists at the University of Michigan who were accused of helping a colleague smuggle biological materials into the US, defence lawyers said. The materials turned out to be mostly tiny, transparent worms – nothing dangerous – though US officials last year hailed the arrests as a victory for national security. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the government must be vigilant when foreign nationals try to “advance a malicious...

There are few assets on earth as strategically sensitive as the ports flanking the Panama Canal. They sit at the hinge of global trade, where container ships glide between oceans and geopolitics moves just beneath the surface. That is why Panama’s seizure of two major port terminals operated by CK Hutchison, the Hong Kong conglomerate built by Li Ka-shing, deserves more than a passing headline. It is not simply a contractual dispute dressed up as constitutional housekeeping. It is a stress test...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled to Beijing with a delicate brief: vouch for a shrinking slice of big German firms still bullish on China, while defending the growing number being squeezed. On day one of his first official visit, Merz trod the line carefully – voicing openness to resetting beleaguered bilateral ties, even while gently nudging his hosts on bugbears including subsidies, currency devaluation and Russia. A day of meetings with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, President Xi Jinping...

Hilary Knight, captain of the victorious US women’s Olympic ice hockey team, said Wednesday it was unfortunate that a “distasteful joke” by President Donald Trump had overshadowed the achievements of US athletes at the Milan-Cortina Games. The US men’s ice hockey team took a congratulatory call from Trump as they celebrated their gold medal victory over Canada. The president invited them to his State of the Union address and added he would have to ask the triumphant women’s team as well or risk...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that he and US President Donald Trump agreed that the next session of trilateral talks in March on a war settlement should lead to a meeting of the countries’ leaders. Zelensky, speaking after a phone conversation with Trump, said the three-sided talks with Russia and the United States would take place early next month. US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner also took part in the ‌phone call. “We expect this meeting to create an...

Cuba’s coastguard shot dead four people and injured six others travelling in a US-registered speedboat in an exchange of fire off the Cuban coast on Wednesday, the interior ministry in Havana said. The “illegal” Florida-registered boat was detected one nautical mile from Falcones Cay in Villa Clara province, the ministry said in a brief statement. As a coastguard vessel approached to identify the boat “shots were fired from the boat”, injuring the commander of the Cuban vessel, the ministry...