Nine former leaders of the top US health body sounded the alarm on Monday about the Trump administration’s evisceration of the agency and warned that vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jnr is “endangering every American’s health”.

The blunt guest essay in The New York Times marks the latest in snowballing attacks on the US health secretary after the director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was recently fired by US President Donald Trump after just weeks in her post.

Susan...

US President Donald Trump has promised to impose hefty import taxes on pharmaceuticals, a category of products he has largely spared in his trade war.

For decades, in fact, imported medicine has mostly been allowed to enter the United States duty free.

That is starting to change. US and European leaders recently detailed a trade deal that includes a 15 per cent tariff rate on some European goods brought into the United States, including pharmaceuticals. Trump is threatening duties of 200 per...

Hamas denounced on Monday a plan reportedly being considered by US President Donald Trump for the United States to take control of the devastated Gaza Strip and for its population to be relocated.

Almost two years since Israel began its campaign in Gaza after Hamas militants’ October 7, 2023 attack, swathes of the Palestinian territory have been reduced to rubble and the vast majority of its population has been displaced at least once.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the White House...

The videos are strikingly lifelike, featuring bikini-clad women conducting street interviews and eliciting lewd comments – but they are entirely fake, generated by AI tools increasingly used to flood social media with sexist content.

Such AI slop – mass-produced content created by cheap artificial intelligence tools that turn simple text prompts into hyperrealistic visuals – is frequently drowning out authentic posts and blurring the line between fiction and reality.

The trend has spawned a...

Hong Kong schools appear to have staunched the problem of shrinking enrolment as fewer Primary One classes are being cut this year, according to official data, with the sector attributing the improvement to an influx of children of mainland Chinese talent.

According to Primary School Profiles 2025 released on Monday, there are 1,569 Primary One classes in public schools this year, 12 fewer than the 1,581 in 2024.

Last year, there were 26 Primary One classes fewer than in the 2023-24 school...

Child protection training should be added to accreditation requirements for professions covered under Hong Kong’s coming mandatory abuse reporting system, while schools should compile a list of high-risk students, an NGO and a principal have suggested.

The calls were made at the start of the academic year on Monday, ahead of the city mandating 25 professions across the social welfare, education, and healthcare sectors to report suspected cases of child abuse from early next year.

Under the...

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on American goods to zero, even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making public shows of solidarity with Chinese and Russian leaders in the face of trade pressure from Washington.

While calling the US relationship with India “one-sided”, Trump wrote on social media: “They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.”

The Indian embassy in...

A Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and pro-Palestinian activists including environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg departed Barcelona again on Monday, several hours after winds forced it to return to the Spanish port, according to Agence France-Presse journalists at the scene.

Around 20 vessels left the Spanish city on Sunday aiming to “open a humanitarian corridor and end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people” amid the Israel-Gaza war, said the Global Sumud Flotilla –...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has adopted a 10-year strategy aimed at advancing a multipolar world, according to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The strategy comes at a time when the regional bloc, in a joint declaration, has acknowledged that escalating geopolitical tensions pose an increasing threat to its security.

Speaking to reporters after a summit on Monday, Wang said that the SCO Development Strategy until 2035 had “set the tone and a clear direction” for the decade to...

Major Chinese social media platforms, including Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and ByteDance-owned Douyin, have launched new features to abide by Monday’s roll-out of a new law that mandates labelling of all artificial intelligence-generated content online.

The law, which was issued in March, requires explicit and implicit labels for AI-generated text, images, audio, video and other virtual content. Explicit markings must be clearly visible to users, while implicit identifiers – such as digital...