At least nine police officers have been killed, and several are missing, after an attack by gunmen in Pakistan’s south-western Balochistan province, a local government official has told BBC Urdu. The attackers opened fire on police guarding the construction site of a multi-billion rupee dam in the Ziarat district, Deputy Commissioner Abdul Quddus Achakzai said….
A court in eastern China has sentenced a former city official to death for taking more than 2.2bn yuan ($325m; £243m) in bribes over 30 years. Yang Youlin, who served in various positions in Nanjing city from 1993 to 2023, was also convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering, with his ill-gotten gains…
South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics says it expects to post a 19-fold jump in its profits, driven by global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips. The company forecast that it made 89tn won (£44bn; $58bn) between the start of April and the end of June, marking its third record quarterly operating profits in…
Chinese companies are expanding globally, and fast. Their biggest commercial competitors are in the US. Waymo, Alphabet’s robotaxi business, remains the commercial leader, operating paid driverless services in several US cities. Amazon-owned Zoox and Tesla are expanding more cautiously, while Uber has abandoned the development of its own autonomous vehicles, which had been marred by…
The Indian government has directed Meta to immediately disable advertisements and content on Instagram that promote or facilitate child sexual abuse material, a senior official said. It comes after a BBC Eye investigation found that Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India, some of which linked users to Telegram…
At least 25 people have been killed – four of them guards – and more than 100 injured in prison riots in western Sri Lanka. The two days of violence at Negombo Prison, in a coastal town north of Colombo, began with clashes between two groups of inmates. Prisoners are alleged to have grabbed prison…
Australia has signed a new defence pact with Fiji, as it seeks to push back against Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The Ocean of Peace Alliance makes the island nation Australia’s fourth formal alliance after the United States, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. It is Fiji’s first alliance. The treaty will be backed…
Popular Chinese tea chain Molly Tea has been ordered to pay 10.3m yuan (£1.1m; $1.5m) in damages after a court ruled that its logo infringed a Louis Vuitton trademark, fuelling an online debate over copyright protection. Chinese media reported last week that a court in the eastern Jiangsu province ruled that the Shenzhen-based tea company…
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologised “unequivocally” for comments he made about popstar Kylie Minogue in a podcast interview last week. The leader had made an appearance on the Bush Deep podcast with comedian Nikki Osborne, who asked him to place celebrities Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore in a “shag, marry or…
The US, however, has continued to tighten the screws. In late May it launched an investigation to determine whether Vietnam’s failure to stamp out IP violations was “unreasonable” and problematic for US commerce. So Vietnamese authorities tightened screws of their own. On 10 June, police in Thanh Hoa province dismantled a ring that manufactured and…