Tag: International Relations

The German Auto Industry, a Pillar of the National Psyche, Is Trembling

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The centerpiece of Mercedes-Benz’s 140th birthday party in January was a patent application filed in 1886 by an engineer named Carl Benz for a “vehicle with gas engine.” The way Mercedes executives spoke of the handwritten document, which at one point was projected on a large wall on the company campus in Stuttgart, Germany, it might have been a sacred parchment. It not only certifies that Germany is the birthplace of the automobile but also helps explain why the woes of the country’s automakers — Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW —…

Beijing Protests After New Zealand Minister Insults Chinese-Born Lawmaker

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China has lodged a formal protest after New Zealand’s top diplomat told a Chinese-born lawmaker to “go back to your own country,” a comment that has also prompted calls at home for the minister’s dismissal. The foreign minister Winston Peters, leader of the populist New Zealand First party and a longtime political kingmaker in New Zealand, made the remarks during a heated debate in the Parliament in Wellington on Wednesday in a retort to Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green Party lawmaker whose family had immigrated when he was a child. Responding…

A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week

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One December afternoon, the sky tore open and a fiery hunk of metal, wider than a school bus, came hurtling down. It was louder than a thunderclap when it plunged into a patch of farmland, startling everyone in the village of Mukuku, about three hours south of Nairobi, Kenya. “People were thinking this is the end of the world,” said John Mukunuu, who lives nearby. When the villagers arrived, they found a giant ring, taller than a man and heavier than a horse, lodged into the earth. They watched it…

A New Security Order Is Taking Shape in Asia

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A historic shift has gathered pace across Asia this summer. Over the past several weeks, China has extended maritime patrols to cover Taiwan’s east coast, demonstrating its ability to encircle the island. It has intensified military, trade and diplomatic pressure on Japan and test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile that showcased its growing sea-based nuclear capability. With an eye on China’s growing power, other countries have drawn closer, revealing the contours of an emerging new security architecture. Japan has strengthened defense ties with Australia, the Philippines and India, and it is…

Philippines Says Sailor Was Injured in Skirmish With Chinese Coast Guard

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The Philippine military accused China’s coast guard of injuring one of its sailors in a scuffle that broke out on Monday in the South China Sea, where the two countries have been locked in a decades-long territorial dispute. The episode began when an inflatable Chinese coast guard boat approached the Sierra Madre, a beached World War II-era warship that the Philippines uses as a military outpost in a disputed reef, and lashed out at the Philippine sailors who approached in a boat to chase them away, the Armed Forces of…

Russia Bill Broadens Sanctions but Could Fuel Fears Over the Dollar

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A Russia sanctions bill is posing a dilemma for the Trump administration: Lawmakers are pushing to wage further financial warfare just as the administration worries that heavy use of sanctions may erode the U.S. dollar’s supremacy. The bill, which was the brainchild of Senator Lindsey Graham before his death, aims to impose mandatory sanctions on Russia and its allies and potentially broaden the reach of penalties to include tariffs on buyers of Russian energy. The White House has said that the scope of the sanctions could broaden to include Iran…

China’s Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi Model, Threatening America’s Lead

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The contest between China and the United States for supremacy in artificial intelligence escalated on Friday when the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI released a new A.I. model that appeared to narrow the lead held by well-funded American competitors. Moonshot said that the model, Kimi K3, was the world’s largest open-source A.I. system, allowing anyone to use, modify and build on it freely. The company said that Kimi K3 performed as well as leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic at some key tasks. The release coincided with an address by Xi…

‘Suddenly, I Was Free’: A Chinese Pastor’s Journey From Jail to the U.S.

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The Chinese police officers hurried the pastor out of the jail cell where he’d been held for 266 days. They hustled him into a van, then onto a train — where he sat surrounded by about two dozen officers, many with cameras trained on him. The pastor, Jin Mingri, who founded one of China’s most prominent underground churches, wondered aloud if he was being transferred to a secret prison. An officer laughed and told him to think more positively. Hours later, Mr. Jin, who also goes by Ezra, had been…

Beijing Rejects Trump’s Claim of Meddling, but Avoids a Fight

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China on Friday rejected President Trump’s claim that it had meddled in American elections as baseless. But its response was relatively restrained, a sign that Beijing did not want to let the accusation derail a thaw in relations that both sides have spent months trying to preserve. Mr. Trump had said in a speech that China had carried out “the largest compromise of election data in history” starting with the 2020 cycle, one of several claims he made that was either overstated or untethered from reality. In Beijing, a foreign…

U.S. Presses China to Free American Seismologist Accused of Spying

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An American seismologist who did contract research for the U.S. government related to nuclear tests in North Korea has been detained in China for nearly two years and accused of spying, his family and supporters said. Youlin Chen, who was born in China, was detained by Chinese state security officers at a Beijing airport in November 2024, when he was about to return to home in Boston. Dr. Chen’s family and supporters said they were making his case public for the first time this week in the hope that the…