Hong Kong’s plan to start an interbank tokenised gold transaction project marks a crucial step in its quest to make itself a key global hub for the strategically important precious metal, according to analysts. The city planned to launch a gold token representing a standard 400-ounce gold bar, referencing HAU, Hong Kong’s ticker for gold prices launched earlier this year, said Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui Ching-yu during the annual Fintech Week event on...
This week’s $6.3 billion hack of Binance is the largest to hit crypto, and would be the most that North Koreans have stolen in years of brazen cybercrime.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it was taking steps to reissue passports for all 168 people affected by an online leak of sensitive personal information, including President Lee Jae Myung and first lady Kim Hea-kyung, as police investigate how the data was exposed. “The foreign ministry is swiftly taking measures to ensure the smooth reissuance of passports for all affected individuals, including the president and first lady,” ministry spokesman Park Doo-soon said during a...
The impeachment trial of Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio may soon draw to a close after the prosecution decided to drop several of her charges, a move that legal experts have said is intended to speed up the trial and secure a conviction by focusing on the strongest evidence against her. Beyond the trial, the decision could have significant political implications for the 2028 presidential race, with a swift verdict potentially removing a strong candidate, according to analysts. On...
A 29-year-old Singaporean man was sentenced to five years and nine months’ jail in Australia on Monday after he killed a man who stole a backpack from his rental car. Lincoln Ng Jing Kai chased the man in a car and knocked him off his e-bike before driving over him. He was originally charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in August after prosecutors agreed to accept the lesser charge. Sentencing him, Judge Terence Palmer said Ng’s actions “involved an element of taking the law...
North Korea is rapidly advancing its drone warfare capabilities by drawing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, even as South Korea’s efforts to keep pace remain bogged down by procurement delays and bureaucratic red tape, observers warn. They also caution that cryptocurrency theft has become a crucial source of funding for Pyongyang’s weapons programmes, following US Federal Bureau of Investigation allegations that North Korean state-backed hackers stole more than US$6 billion from Binance, the...
North Korea on Tuesday slammed the FBI’s allegations that Pyongyang was behind the theft of US$6 billion from cryptocurrency platform Binance, with Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister labelling it a “grave political provocation”. Kim Yo-jong, in a statement released on Tuesday by the KCNA state news agency, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s claim was “absurd rhetoric and nothing new”, given earlier US allegations that North Korea was behind last year’s major hack of Bybit. “It is a grave...
Akhilesh Pillalamarri, an attorney and columnist for The Diplomat, joins host Tushar Shetty to explore the cultural anxieties driving right-wing attacks on Indian Americans.
Despite the stir over an impending Quad Leaders’ summit, the grouping has had a productive year with multiple outcome-oriented convenings
Pakistan can broker agreements over the Strait of Hormuz, but it has no way to enforce compliance.
14 years later, the Chinese Communist Party is still carrying out the relentless anti-corruption crusade that has become the signature program of Xi Jinping’s rule.
With member states insistent on cooperation with outsiders, will Russia become one of them?