Month: April 2026

The United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave a global cartel of major oil-exporting countries is seen to reflect a widening fracture within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The country joined the group in 1971, though one of its emirates – Abu Dhabi – joined in 1967. Advertisement The UAE’s Ministry of Infrastructure said in a statement that the decision was based on the country’s national interests and its commitment to meeting global market demand. The UAE is one of the world’s biggest oil producers and exporters. The decision follows the…

The two-month war with Iran has cost about US$25 billion, a Pentagon official told lawmakers on Wednesday, as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth defended a record $1.5 trillion military budget that faces backlash from Democrats. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer, offered the first official estimate of the cost of the war in Iran. He said that most of the US$25 billion in spending went towards ammunition, but the US military also allocated funds for operations and equipment upgrades.…

The United States is stepping up pressure on China across multiple strategic fronts, in moves analysts say could strengthen US President Donald Trump’s hand ahead of his planned high-stakes mid-May meeting with President Xi Jinping. But they cautioned that Beijing was likely to remain unfazed because it had already adapted to earlier curbs by reducing its reliance on the American market. US lawmakers in the House Foreign Affairs Committee have advanced 20 new export control measures this month to tighten Chinese access to American technology and limit its ability to…

Airbus secured an order for 137 A320neo jets from Chinese airlines, extending the European company’s edge in one of aviation’s most contested markets as US rival Boeing waits on a long-speculated deal with Beijing. China Southern Airlines, one of China’s three major state-owned carriers, announced the deal on Wednesday. The airline, based in the southern city of Guangzhou, will purchase 102 aircraft, while its subsidiary Xiamen Airlines will acquire the remaining 35. The orders carry a combined list price of US$21.37 billion, although both carriers received discounts, according to a…

The controversy centres not on the agent’s actions, but on what appeared to be a Chinese-made Holosun red dot sight mounted on her Glock pistol. The image, which spread rapidly across firearms forums after being shared on social media, shows a plain-clothes agent with her weapon drawn as US President Donald Trump is rushed from the stage to safety. Advertisement While commenters said the agent belonged to the US Secret Service, some US media labelled the pictured team as Army CID Executive Protection Directorate Special Agents. 02:14 Trump uninjured after…

Cambricon’s first-quarter revenue jumped 160 per cent from a year earlier to 2.89 billion yuan (US$423 million), while profit soared 185 per cent to 1 billion yuan, the company said in a filing on Wednesday. Sometimes dubbed “little Nvidia” in China, the Beijing-based, Shanghai-listed company attributed its strong growth to a “sustained surge in the AI industry’s computing power demand”. Advertisement The company said last month that it planned to distribute a cash dividend of 15 yuan (US$2.20) for every 10 shares held, totalling more than 632 million yuan, after…

China may gain from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) withdrawing from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), benefiting from additional supply as global oil markets face growing strain three months into the US-Israeli war in Iran, analysts said. The UAE – Opec’s third-largest producer, accounting for about 12 per cent of its total output – will formally leave the bloc on May 1. UAE Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed al-Mazrouei told CNBC that it was the “right time” to exit, adding that supply shortfalls demanded more flexibility than Opec’s collective…