Month: July 2025

Taiwanese leader Lai in one of his ‘worst moments’ as approval rating falls

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Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te’s approval rating has fallen below 45 per cent for the second time since he took office amid a backlash over his handling of Typhoon Danas and his support for a recall campaign targeting opposition lawmakers. Advertisement A new survey released by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation on Tuesday found that only 42.9 per cent of respondents were satisfied with Lai’s performance – down 5.8 percentage points from June. The disapproval rating was 44.5 per cent. It marks the second time dissatisfaction with Lai has surpassed…

Chikungunya outbreak in south China spurs action to stop mosquito-borne disease

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Authorities in south China’s Foshan city have launched a campaign to curb an outbreak of the mosquito-borne chikungunya fever. The disease, which is not common in Guangdong province, has also put neighbouring Hong Kong on alert. Advertisement Local authorities in Foshan’s Shunde and Nanhai districts issued notices on Saturday urging all residents and communities to carry out indoor sanitation and outdoor clean-ups over the weekend as mosquito control measures. The outbreak originated from an imported case detected in Shunde on July 8, according to the local health bureau. The number…

Chinese scientists develop low-cost cell therapy for cancer, asthma

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Chinese researchers have come up with a cheaper and easier way of delivering a highly specialised, personalised cell therapy to treat blood cancers and other serious diseases. Advertisement This new method is much easier to programme than the conventional approach and is available at a fraction of the cost, according to experts in the field. The treatment, known as CAR-T, is a type of immunotherapy that has taken off in recent years and has also shown promise in treating other conditions such as asthma and autoimmune diseases. However, these cell…

China’s market regulator summons Alibaba, Meituan, JD amid delivery war

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China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) on Friday summoned major online food delivery platforms – Alibaba Group Holding’s Ele.me, Meituan, and JD.com – urging them to engage in “rational” competition amid a prolonged price war. Advertisement The meeting aimed to “further regulate promotion behaviours, encourage rational competition, and foster a healthy ecosystem and win-win situation for consumers, merchants, delivery riders, and platform operators”, the regulator said in an announcement. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The SAMR said those companies must adhere to e-commerce, anti-unfair competition, and food…

Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China

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The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday. Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China. Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus. China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian…

Did UK military data rules make a leak more likely?

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The leak by the UK’s Ministry of Defence of identifying information for thousands of Afghans was the latest in a string of blunders that has raised questions about the department’s handling of sensitive data. This week’s revelation — that a database with details of 25,000 people was emailed out in 2022 — followed a series of breaches in 2021 that saw the department later forced to pay £1.6mn in compensation to more than 250 individuals.  In those cases, an email was sent to a large number of people in the…

Did UK’s military data rules make a leak more likely?

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The leak by the UK’s Ministry of Defence of identifying information for thousands of Afghans was the latest in a string of blunders that has raised questions about the department’s handling of sensitive data. This week’s revelation — that a database with details of 25,000 people was emailed out in 2022 — followed a series of breaches in 2021 that saw the department later forced to pay £1.6mn in compensation to more than 250 individuals.  In those cases, an email was sent to a large number of people in the…

Afghan files: Did UK’s military data rules make a leak more likely?

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The leak by the UK’s Ministry of Defence of identifying information for thousands of Afghans was the latest in a string of blunders that has raised questions about the department’s handling of sensitive data. This week’s revelation — that a database with details of 25,000 people was emailed out in 2022 — followed a series of breaches in 2021 that saw the department later forced to pay £1.6mn in compensation to more than 250 individuals.  In those cases, an email was sent to a large number of people in the…

Have you heard about Australian wine?

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If I were an Australian wine producer, I’d be extremely frustrated. On the basis of the many current Australian wines I get to taste, I know that the quality and diversity of Australian wine has never been greater, but the rest of the world pretty much ignores it. There is one big exception to this: China. China imposed crippling import tariffs on Australian wine in November 2020 (when it was Australian wine’s most important export market by far) and lifted them at the end of March 2024 so that resumed…

Inside India’s powerful Hindu-nationalist movement

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On a blistering summer evening in Nagpur, a city in Central India, a sea of almost a thousand men clad in brown trousers, crisp white shirts and black caps stood stiffly, as a saffron-coloured flag quivered up a mast.  A whistle shrieked and the graduating karyakartas, or “workers” — most of them moustachioed, some of them wiry, others with bulging bellies over their belt buckles — held their right arms and open palms stiff across their chests in salute, followed by a quick head bow. To the background of beating drums,…