Day: April 14, 2026

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has denounced proposed tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as a worrisome step in the wrong direction, while noting that several thousand stranded seafarers remain the international shipping community’s foremost concern. “Freedom of navigation has to be one of the pillars of free trade, and it would be a retrograde step – a really bad step,” said John Denholm, chair designate of the ICS, referring to the idea of charging vessels to transit the oil chokepoint. Speaking in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Denholm warned…

Not all scientists are willing to share why they returned to China. Most remain tight-lipped about their reasons for returning home and their specific experiences because of political or other non-scientific reasons. Zhang, who worked for many years in Cambridge, England, and Yale University in the United States, is one of the world’s top and most influential cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) scientists while harbouring further ambitious goals. Advertisement “The first time I really started thinking ‘should I go back to China’ was when a very good PhD student in my lab…

Taiwan’s political pendulum is reversing. The government led by Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai Ching-te is increasingly discredited, not least for selling out the jewel of its semiconductor industry to the United States under pressure from President Donald Trump. The Legislative Yuan is controlled by the opposition led by the Kuomintang (KMT). Party politics is now institutionalised into a sustained confrontation between the island’s presidency and its legislature. Now, budgets can’t pass, including funds for arms purchases from Washington. The constitutional court can’t intervene to resolve the budget dispute…

As the US imposes its own blockade on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz following the collapse of talks with Iran at the weekend, we take a look at how major economies in Asia and Europe could be affected by further restrictions on passage through one of the world’s most critical choke points for energy supplies. Who is most vulnerable in this energy crisis? According to a recent report by Japanese investment bank Nomura, the regions most exposed to the tensions in the Persian Gulf are Asian economies, excluding China,…

Russia and China’s top envoys met in Beijing on Tuesday to discuss the Iran war, Ukraine and Taiwan as Beijing stepped up its Iran war diplomacy and tensions with Washington increased. In a jab at Washington and US President Donald Trump that did not mention either by name, a Chinese readout of the meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov noted that the world is increasingly marked by turmoil and instability. The two top diplomats also discussed plans for a meeting “within the year” between…

Brazil will require foreign partners to process rare earth minerals domestically as a condition for access to its reserves, a senior government official said this week, setting terms that could reshape how Chinese and Western firms compete for resources the country has long exported raw. “Our doors of Brazil to foreign investment are open, but our position has matured,” Leonardo Durans, a senior official at Brazil’s industry ministry, said at a press conference with international media on Monday. “The commitment we will demand from everyone is domestic technological development and…

Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors held rare direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, a tentative step towards broader negotiations to end the conflict in Lebanon, which has complicated the Trump administration’s fragile ceasefire with Iran. Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s envoy to the United States, met his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Mahadeh, at the State Department on Tuesday morning in talks mediated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio sought to temper expectations of Tuesday’s negotiations, noting in brief remarks that complexities would not be resolved in the coming hours and that the…

As US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepare to sit down in the coming weeks, negotiations on deliverables and scheduling have accelerated, including a possible visit to Beijing’s Temple of Heaven and a military parade, according to several people familiar with the planning process. The lead-up for such a consequential summit has been compressed and rather disjointed given the Middle East war and Trump’s preference for making last-minute decisions based on his “gut”. “This will be so interesting,” said one person knowledgeable about planning details. “You have…