World

Hong Kong’s property tycoons made high-profile appearances to cast their ballots during Sunday’s Legislative Council election and urged the public to fulfil their civic duty. Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) chairman and managing director Raymond Kwok Ping-luen voted at the Wong Chuk Hang Sports Centre in Aberdeen on Sunday morning. SHKP said it had introduced several measures to encourage its …

The Hungarian prime minister has claimed the bloc is shifting its economy to reach full combat readiness within five years Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed that the European Union is preparing for war with Russia and plans to be fully ready by 2030. Speaking at an anti-war rally on Saturday, Orban said that Europe was already making moves …

A two-year-old boy has died on a Greek island after being reportedly mauled by a pitbull. The alleged dog attack happened in a village on the popular holiday island of Zakynthos, shortly after the toddler and his parents had returned home from a shopping trip.  The boy was allegedly attacked after he entered the property, with the dog reportedly injuring …

Indian regulators held IndiGo’s chief executive accountable for the severe disruptions that have roiled the country’s biggest airline in recent days, faulting the company for “significant lapses in planning, oversight and resource management.” The Director General of Civil Aviation issued a show-cause notice on Saturday demanding CEO Pieter Elbers explain the cancellations that affected almost half of its flights the …

A recent White House document has warned that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” due to its current political and cultural headwinds The United States remains the EU’s most important ally, despite Washington publishing a new national security strategy that is highly critical of Western Europe, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas has claimed. Speaking at the Doha Forum in …

Ground has quite literally been broken on a Chinese-funded project to modernise the Tanzania-Zambia railway after years of negotiations, amid intensifying “corridor wars” as major powers compete to shape transport and trade networks across not just Africa but also Eurasia and beyond. The US$1.4 billion upgrade will restore the 1,860km railway, known as Tazara, a vital corridor linking Zambia’s Copperbelt …

Known as ‘death by a thousand cuts’ or ‘slow slicing’, this chilling method of execution was used in China, and the name barely scratches the surface of the horrors it entailed. Until its prohibition in 1905, criminals across China, Vietnam, and Korea could be sentenced to Lingchi, a form of torture resulting in a slow and agonising  death. Convicts would …

The agency has found the protective structure over the 1986 reactor critically damaged after a drone strike The protective shelter over the reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant can no longer guarantee radiation containment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said. The agency added that urgent major repairs are now required. The warning follows an inspection prompted by a …

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who shoots an albatross is forced to hang it around his neck as penance, with the bird becoming a heavy burden and a reminder of his guilt. This metaphor was invoked by Goh Keng Swee, widely regarded as the “economic architect” of modern Singapore, as his code …

Rural fire service superintendent Ben Shepard has echoed the words of the NSW Premier, describing conditions as “problematic”. He told the ABC, Australia’s national broadcaster, that a fire in the coastal town of Woy Woy, NSW, transferred across the bay by jumping over the ocean, with embers therefore traveling nearly an entire kilometre to ignite new parts of the region ablaze. …