Day: September 12, 2026

This article was first published on September 10, 1976. Sense of grief in Hongkong A deep sense of grief was felt by great numbers of the people in Hongkong yesterday (September 9, 1976) when radio and television stations flashed the news of the Chairman’s passing. The news brought a cloud of gloom over celebrations of the mid-autumn festivities. Flags at a number of major building and hotels, – including the Bank of China – were flown at half-mast within an hour of the announcement. Hongkong people first heard the news…

Denisovan remains discovered in southwestern China reveal that Yunnan province’s warm, biodiverse plateau was a “hunting paradise” for the hominins during a global glacial period, according to new research published in the journal Nature. Within the region’s coniferous forests and forest-steppe environments, this archaic human group established a stable subsistence pattern highly adapted to local resources through specialised hunting and the intensive exploitation of animals. The extinct Denisovans once roamed Eurasia, having diverged from modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals several hundred thousand years ago. Southern China’s biggest natural history…

Some of my earliest memories of Bengaluru, where I spent my summer holidays, are of looking up in wonder at the towering canopy of trees in Cubbon Park. Even in the height of summer, Bengaluru could be cool enough to require a light jacket. Today, the iconic Cubbon Park, the pride of the city I now call home, is under threat. So is Lalbagh Botanical Garden, another of the city’s iconic green spaces, with roots stretching back more than 250 years. On a Sunday morning in Bengaluru last month, thousands…

The draft sets out ways to block extraterritorial investigations and to retaliate against foreign anti-corruption enforcement, drawing a firm legal boundary against foreign jurisdictions while establishing its own mechanism to police overseas assets. In doing so, legal specialists warn, Beijing is also creating a double-edged regulatory framework that will force multinationals and Chinese businesses operating in regional hubs such as Singapore to navigate data compliance dilemmas. The draft Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law was submitted to the country’s top legislature in late August for its first reading, and the public has until…

A campaign document belonging to Flavio Bolsonaro, the right-wing front-runner in the presidential election to be held in Brazil next month, offered Washington a rare earths supply chain designed to weaken China’s grip, local news site Amado Mundo reported on Saturday. Written in English and dated March 19, the 22-page presentation was drafted by Andre Marinho, a close Bolsonaro ally who presented the plan to the Rockbridge Network, a group of wealthy conservative donors founded by J.D. Vance in 2019, Amado Mundo said. Marinho, who built a television career impersonating…

The People’s Liberation Army may be seeking to give its frontline mechanised units mobile protection against the kind of drone-saturated battlefield that could emerge in a Taiwan conflict. Unverified images posted on mainland Chinese social media on August 29 show a new variant of the Type 19 amphibious 8×8 combat vehicle featuring a turret-mounted laser weapon and extra sensors alongside its standard autocannon. Janes, an open-source defence intelligence provider, reported in 2023 that vehicles from the Type 19 family had entered service with the 73rd Group Army under the Eastern…

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi met on the sidelines of the Brics summit in New Delhi on Saturday, marking the highest-level meeting between the two sides since the Iran war began. The bilateral meeting came as the fallout of the war in Iran widened, with Saudi Arabia shutting its key East-West oil pipeline after it was attacked by drones on Friday. The closure of the pipeline stretching across the Arabian peninsula has heightened global concerns over more oil supply disruption. The meeting, confirmed by…

Brics countries agreed on Saturday to expand trade and payments in local currencies, making another step towards de-dollarisation as the bloc seeks to counter an assertive United States. The pledges were part of the “New Delhi Declaration 2026”, adopted unanimously on the opening day of the 18th Brics summit. After a closed session, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerged to say that no member had “objected” to the text. The 45-page declaration said the group’s Payment Task Force had studied “cross-border interoperability of payment and messaging channels” and held talks…

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday that China and India, as the world’s most populous nations and key members of the Global South, bore “significant responsibilities” in an international landscape “fraught with turbulence and change”. Xi said that although the countries had different national circumstances, “there is ample scope for us to learn from each other’s strengths, offer mutual support, achieve shared success and pursue common development”. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the Brics summit in New Delhi, where trade, investment,…

Chinese researchers have modelled a war game scenario suggesting that a complete economic decoupling between the US and China could, unexpectedly, yield dividends for most other nations. Using a quantitative trade model – a data-based economic framework that estimates how changes in trade affect economies – two researchers based in southern China’s Guangdong province found that if the world’s two largest economies were to sever trade relations entirely, a number of other countries, including nations in Southeast Asia, would actually see an increase in overall economic welfare. “These favourable changes…