Category: Pl

Washington on Friday welcomed a Panamanian court ruling cancelling a contract held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings to operate two ports along the Panama Canal, a decision seen as a boost to the United States’ efforts to counter Chinese influence in the western hemisphere. The reaction came as Panama’s government sought to reassure workers and investors on the ground that trade and jobs would not be affected. “The United States is encouraged by the recent Panamanian Supreme Court’s decision to rule port concessions to China unconstitutional,”…

Beijing has lifted sanctions on British peers and lawmakers, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said, following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “This has been a cause of concern in parliament and for parliamentarians for some time and that is why I raised it on this visit,” Starmer told ITV News in Shanghai. “And the response from the Chinese is that the restrictions no longer apply and President Xi has told me that that means that all parliamentarians are welcome to visit,” he added. Advertisement The sanctions had…

Spanish police have detained a 38-year-old Chinese national who owned a ‌hair salon near Barcelona on suspicion of financing ‍the militant group Hamas through about €600,000 (US$715,000) in cryptocurrency transfers, regional police said on Friday. Investigators traced at least 31 crypto transactions ⁠from virtual wallets controlled by the suspect to addresses that are suspected of being linked to an entity used by the Islamist group, whose attack on Israel on October 7, ‍2023, triggered a two-year war in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is ‍designated as a terrorist organisation by the…

The first close-up image of the Chinese PL-17 long-range missile – one of the most mysterious weapons in the PLA Air Force’s arsenal – appears to have surfaced online. Analysts say the PL-17 may be the world’s longest-range air-to-air missile, posing a threat to US air superiority in the western Pacific. A photo believed to show the PL-17 has recently been making the rounds on Chinese social media. The date and location of the photo are unclear, although the angle of view is extremely close. The South China Morning Post…

China has accused the Philippines of “deliberately stoking maritime tensions” following reports Manila had warned it would stage military exercises across a large area of the disputed South China Sea for more than two months. The Philippine civil aviation authority issued a notice to airmen that set aside an expansive area north of Scarborough Shoal for military activities between January 21 and March 31, according to mainland Chinese and Taiwanese media. Advertisement Days later, the Philippines also carried out this year’s first joint maritime operation with the United States in…

Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has open-sourced its first artificial intelligence models for robotics, as it steps up efforts to build machine intelligence capable of handling complex real-world tasks. The move signals a deeper push by the Hangzhou-based Ant into embodied intelligence – AI systems designed to perceive, reason and act in physical environments rather than purely digital settings. The company is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post. Ant’s robotics arm, Ant Lingbo Technology, also known as Robbyant, said its latest releases…