STEM crisis in China’s universities; preliminary deal struck: 5 weekend reads

A 13-year-old girl who had not received the seasonal influenza vaccination has died in hospital following an infection, the first paediatric flu-related death in Hong Kong this year. The previously healthy girl developed symptoms including fever, cough, sore throat, and runny nose from Sunday last week, according to the Centre for Health Protection (CHP). Her…

The United States will send the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Middle East to back up another already there, a person familiar with the plans said on Friday, putting more American firepower behind US President Donald Trump’s efforts to coerce Iran into a deal over its nuclear programme. The USS Gerald R. Ford’s planned…

Britain’s King Charles on Thursday stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after weeks of pressure to act over his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Buckingham Palace said. After the king’s rare move, which follows years of shameful scandals, he would be known as…

A week after a deadly fire tore through a Jakarta office building and killed 22 people, labour groups and urban planners say the tragedy is a stark example of how weak enforcement, “back-room dealings” and risky conversions of office space continue to endanger workers in Indonesia’s capital. The blaze broke out on December 9 at…

The international economic system is undergoing a structural transformation marked by intensifying US-China strategic and economic rivalry, supply chain fragmentation, technological bloc formation, demographic asymmetries, and the gradual reconfiguration of globalization. Within this evolving geopolitical and geo-economic environment, middle powers are being increasingly compelled to recalibrate their strategic alignments and economic partnerships in order to…

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, sales director Sabir Ansari relied on Deliveroo almost daily for burgers and pasta delivered to his door in Singapore. Over time, the 31-year-old said, it became harder to justify the service’s costs as rival platforms such as Grab and Foodpanda offered more food options and aggressive promotions that…