Day: June 14, 2025

Newly elected South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has signalled a desire to ease tensions with North Korea, halting propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, and he has turned to China for support. Advertisement In a 30-minute phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, six days after taking office, Lee urged China to play a “constructive role” in the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Xi responded that China would make efforts to resolve the issue, saying that peace and stability on the peninsula were in the common interest of…

This live blog has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Get faster notifications on the latest updates by downloading our app. For the first time in more than three decades, the United States is holding a major military parade in the nation’s capital on Saturday – fulfilling a long-standing desire of US President Donald Trump on a day that was marred by a political assassination. Echoing displays more typically seen in countries including China, France and Russia, the…

He Jiankui looked a little tired and worn as he contemplated his future. Advertisement With no home and no institution to host his research, the 41-year-old biophysicist and self-proclaimed “pioneer of gene editing” was weighing up what to do next while staying at an upmarket hotel in Beijing late last month. He, who caused a global uproar in 2018 with his announcement of the world’s first gene-edited babies, planned to move to the United States to continue his research into gene-editing embryos to combat diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.…

Advertisement The trial is on a 37-year-old man who had to have all of his limbs amputated after a high-voltage electrical accident more than a decade ago. In March, researchers implanted a device roughly the size of a coin and a series of electrodes into the man’s brain. A few weeks later, he was able to control a cursor on an electronic device, enabling him to play chess and video games, and perform computer operations at a near-normal level of proficiency, according to the report. The researchers plan to conduct…

Canada’s new government will invest more in mining at a time when the country’s economy and manufacturing sector are facing “challenges” related to China’s curbs on rare earth exports, Bill Morneau, former Canadian finance minister, told the Post. Advertisement “One of the challenges for Canada is that we will need to increase our own mining,” Morneau, who was in office between 2015 and 2020 under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, said in Shanghai on Friday. “The initiative by new [Prime Minister] Mark Carney is to advance the ability to get big…

For two decades, it was popular for many Chinese families to send their children on “study tours” overseas – most often to the United States – during the summer. Advertisement The programmes generally involved summer camps jointly organised by American universities and language institutions, as well as visits to colleges, museums and tourist attractions. In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, around 1.3 million Chinese students spent part of their summer holidays studying overseas, according to a report by Beijing-based consultancy Huaon.com, with the US ranked the most popular destination. The…

During thorny human rights talks with China on Friday, the European Union voiced concerns about what it called a “deterioration of fundamental freedoms” in the country. Advertisement The EU cited “government interference” in the succession plan for the Dalai Lama, an ongoing crackdown in Hong Kong, and jailed Uygur and Tibetan activists as examples in its statement on the 40th edition of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue in Brussels. The bloc accused China of “persistent restrictions on freedom of expression, religion or belief, peaceful assembly, and the right to equality…

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the ruling Communist Party to learn from the legacy of early party figure Chen Yun – a pioneer of China’s economic planning – in remarks on Friday to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the late statesman’s birth. Advertisement Xi called on the party to have unwavering confidence when facing “chaotic and complex turbulence”, and to strengthen its ability to cut a path for China’s economy with “objective and thorough” research, according to state news agency Xinhua. The party is preparing for an annual conclave, to…

A major space science cooperation project between China and Brazil is entering its last pre-commission stages, with the departure of what will be an Olympic pool-sized telescope from the northern Chinese port of Tianjin on Monday. Advertisement The main structure of the radio telescope is expected to arrive in the hilly hinterland of Paraíba state on the Brazilian east coast in about two months and will be one of the largest of its kind in Latin America when completed in 2026. The remote location – nearly 2,000km (1,240 miles) from…