Twenty years ago, as a fresh graduate, I flew to Hong Kong just a few months after the handover to begin my first job. I spent five very happy years working as a journalist there and never expected that 20 years later I would be refused the right to ...

  Isis has fought desperately and skilfully to hold the Syrian city of Raqqa, under siege by Kurdish-led forces for more than four months, but will soon lose it in the latest defeat for the Islamic fundamentalist movement. Little is left today of the Caliphate declared in 2014, which once ...

  President meets with Secretary of Defence General James Mattis to plan best approach to rogue state’s growing nuclear threat     The US military flew two strategic bombers over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force late on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump met top defence officials to discuss how to respond ...

  Richard Thaler becomes one of very few behavioural economists to receive the discipline’s highest honour   NOT long ago, the starting assumption of any economic theory was that humans are rational actors who maximise their utility. Economists summarily dismissed anyone insisting otherwise. But over the past few decades, behavioural ...

  BARCELONA, Spain — The Catalan secession crisis took a confusing new turn on Tuesday night, after the leader of Catalonia made a perplexing speech in which he appeared to declare independence from Spain, before immediately suspending that decision to allow for more “dialogue” with leaders in Madrid. For days, ...

  With Africa’s population set to double by 2050, economists say the continent must ditch traditional farming methods in favour of modern technology     African farming must modernise and replace its ageing workforce if the continent is going to be able to feed its rising population, a report by ...

  Tehran has promised crushing response if US president makes ‘strategic mistake’ of listing elite force as terrorist entity   In the 11 months since Donald Trump’s election, Tehran has been at pains to avoid kneejerk reactions. The measured responses to the US president’s pronouncements on Iranian activities have revealed ...

  SOUTH Korea’s military is ready to deploy a powerful weapon that can totally paralyse North Korea in the event of a nuclear war.     SOUTH Korea is ready to deploy graphite bombs that can paralyse North Korea’s power grid in the event of a nuclear war. Military sources ...

  Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi The recently-concluded foreign minister-level interaction between Pakistan and the United States showed that there are wide gaps in the foreign policy dispositions of the two countries pertaining mainly to Afghanistan, countering terrorism in the region and a framework for bilateral cooperation. The only redeeming feature ...

  NORTH KOREA warned it “would not flinch” from “the road to bolstering up the nuclear forces” unless the USA backed down from its “hostile” and threatening policy towards Pyongyang.   And Pyongyang’s permanent representative to the United Nations said the United States and Donald Trump should “take the lead” ...