President Donald Trump on Friday said he would “soon” declare the Strait of Hormuz waterway part of US territory after defeating Iran. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated – pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” he said with a chuckle during a political rally at a police academy in Garden City, New York. “It’s true,” he added. It was unclear how seriously Trump intended the remark or whether it represented a new policy...

UK academic Jason Arday, who resigned from the University of Cambridge last week amid a high-profile plagiarism storm that featured racism claims, was found dead on Friday, the prestigious British institution confirmed. Arday, 41, was found unresponsive on Friday afternoon at an address in south London, according to the capital’s Metropolitan Police Service, which did not confirm the identity of the deceased person discovered. “We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news,” Cambridge...

President Donald Trump dismissed concerns on Friday over living conditions and the mental health of service members on a US aircraft carrier deployed against Iran, while confirming the ship would soon rotate out. Asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Trump said “no, they’re not”. Trump also rejected the idea that the ship – now at sea for nine months – had been deployed for too long. “No, no, no, not nearly enough,” he said. The...

Italian authorities recovered three artworks by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth millions of euros that were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma, police said on Friday. A statement from the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad said the artworks were discovered during searches ordered by prosecutors, but no details were given. The investigation is ongoing. Meanwhile, Brazilian police said late on Thursday that they had located eight stolen works by...

Luigi Mangione admitted in court on Friday to fatally shooting US health insurance executive Brian Thompson and pleaded guilty to two federal charges of stalking the executive with the intent to kill him. “I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and ‌he died,” Mangione said. The guilty plea will avert a federal trial in the closely watched case over the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, a brazen crime that was condemned by public officials but became emblematic of Americans’ frustration with health...

Li, a woman in her late twenties from southwestern China, is anxious about her coming interview for a 10-year US visa. She has big plans for her travels – a weeks-long stay next year that would be her first visit to the country – followed by a planned return trip in two years while pregnant so her child can attain American citizenship. But those plans have been thrown into doubt. Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to end “birth tourism”, tightening scrutiny on...

A helicopter pilot has died after crashing in a forest in eastern Germany while carrying out liming work, the police directorate in the city of Chemnitz said on Friday. Workers managed to pull the man from the helicopter after the impact, police said. Despite immediate first aid administered at the scene, the man died from his injuries. The helicopter had no other people on board. Police did not provide information on the identity of the pilot or the cause of the accident near the small town of...

A drone entered Latvian airspace and was shot down by Italian Eurofighter jets, the military said on Friday. The decision to shoot it down was taken to avert a threat to Latvia’s population, Defence Minister Raivis Melnis said. An air alert was lifted after the drone was intercepted, Latvia’s military said on social media, after authorities had urged people across the Baltic state to avoid going outside and seek shelter. A spokeswoman for Latvia’s military said the drone was shot down over a...

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage won his self-triggered by-election in southern England on Friday, but saw his strategy to silence critics backfire when his main rival, Count Binface, a comedian dressed as a trash can, took more than a quarter of the vote. In a highly unusual move, Farage, one of Britain’s leading Brexit campaigners, did not turn up at the vote count in the southern English seaside resort of Clacton because, he said, ‌the police had advised him there was a campaign to disrupt the...

The top US priority now in the Iran war is no longer its nuclear programme but to bring petrol prices down for American consumers, the vice-president said on Thursday, with the treasury secretary adding that new economic punishment to wear down Tehran is imminent. The comments by Vice-President J.D. Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent illustrate the powerful leverage Tehran has gained by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – consistently...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China completes milestone test of US$10.8 billion canal link to Southeast Asia Chinese authorities have conducted the first full transit test along a 134.2km (83.4-mile) canal megaproject linking a vast inland region with Southeast...

Some sailors have reportedly tried throwing themselves into the sea, basic supplies can run short and sanitation is going awry: life on America’s giant Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is increasingly difficult as the Iran war drags on. The ship – now in its ninth month of deployment – is expected to be replaced in the Middle East by another carrier, the George Washington, in a move sure to be welcomed by the Lincoln’s crew and their loved ones. But concerns about conditions on the Lincoln have...

In every civilisation, certain stories capture the psyche so profoundly that they are retold across centuries. In the West, Homer’s Odyssey is the one. Countless adaptations have emerged over millennia, inspiring literary giants from Dante Alighieri to James Joyce. Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation is merely the latest. While it reflects the British-American filmmaker’s personal vision, it also offers a glimpse into the anxieties and self-reflections of today’s Western elite. Homer’s...

President Donald Trump ordered the US Navy to return to using steam catapults to launch planes off of aircraft carriers, acting on a long-time complaint despite opposition from many naval officers. In a presidential memorandum, Trump ordered US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a plan within 60 days on what would be needed to use hydraulic catapults in the next Gerald Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The planned USS Doris Miller will be the fourth ship in the six-vessel...

Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty on Friday to resolve federal charges relating to the fatal shooting of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson, and prosecutors will recommend he serve life in prison, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The plea would come at a Friday hearing that US District Judge Margaret Garnett set after federal prosecutors and defence lawyers jointly requested one. Court records did not identify the purpose of the hearing, and it is possible...

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca defence agreement, they executed a structural overhaul of the Middle East’s security architecture. The pact codifies a defence commitment, where an armed attack on one is treated as an assault on all. Building upon September’s Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement, this tripartite arrangement bridges the financial capital of the Gulf, the...

⁠Bird remains were found ⁠in the engine of a Ryanair Boeing 737 NG plane where a passenger was partially sucked through a broken window shortly after take-off from Greece in July, the US National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday. The NTSB ‌is investigating the incident where a piece of the engine broke off the plane and smashed the window. The plane, headed to Germany, lost pressure and was forced to make an emergency landing. The NTSB said in its preliminary report into the July 10...

The Pacific-based aircraft carrier USS George Washington has begun heading towards the Middle East, according to Navy statements and open source information on the ship’s movements. This comes as reports have emerged of mental health and supply issues aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose long deployment to the Middle East in support of the Iran war includes a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. The USS George Washington left port in Da Nang, Vietnam, last week,...