Bank of America, the second-largest US bank, failed to promptly report hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious transactions bearing signs of Chinese money-laundering networks, US regulators said on Tuesday, announcing more than US$1.21 billion in penalties for broader anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, said the activity included large wire transfers to counterparties in China, repeated credit-card purchases at major retailers...

The United States has downgraded Hong Kong to the lowest tier in its annual human trafficking report, citing shortcomings in prosecutions and victim identification, an assessment the city’s government rejected as “entirely unfounded”. The US State Department’s 2026 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, released on Thursday, moved Hong Kong from the Tier 2 Watch List, where it had been listed for two consecutive years, to Tier 3. That places the city alongside mainland China and Macau among 20...