China

China’s President Xi Jinping has told Russia’s Vladimir Putin he is pleased to see Moscow maintain contact with the United States to advance a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis.

The remarks during a phone call between the two leaders on Friday come after the Kremlin said President Putin would meet US President Donald Trump in the coming days.

During the phone call, Xi said China would maintain its stance on the need for peace talks and a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The Kremlin said Putin had called his Chinese counterpart to update him on the latest US-Russia talks, during which Xi expressed support for a “long-term” solution to the Ukraine conflict.

The call between Xi and Putin was their second in less than two months. Putin is expected to visit China in September for events marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The two countries have further bolstered their economic, trade and security cooperation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which triggered a sharp deterioration in Moscow’s relations with the West.

China has never denounced Russia’s war nor called for it to withdraw its troops, and many of Ukraine’s allies believe that Beijing has provided support to Moscow. Beijing insists it is a neutral party, regularly calling for an end to the fighting while also accusing Western countries of prolonging the conflict by arming Ukraine.

Trump has voiced growing frustration with Putin over the lack of progress towards peace in Ukraine and has threatened to impose heavy tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, including China.

The US president on Wednesday said he could announce further tariffs on China similar to the 25 percent duties he has already imposed on India over its purchases of Russian oil.

In response to those remarks, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday that Beijing’s trade and energy cooperation with Russia was “just and legitimate”.

“We will continue to take reasonable measures to ensure energy security based on our own national interests,” Guo Jiakun said in a statement.

Calls with other allies

Putin and Trump are set to hold talks, although no firm date or venue has been set. Both sides have confirmed preparations for a summit are under way and have suggested that a meeting could take place next week.

China has been mentioned in media reports as a possible venue for the Putin-Trump summit, with speculation that Trump could join Putin there in early September.

The Kremlin also said Putin had spoken to the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and briefed them on talks he held with US envoy Steve Witkoff on Wednesday.

Putin also discussed Ukraine in a phone call with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, the Belarusian state news agency BelTA reported.

Indian President Narendra Modi also held a phone call with Putin to discuss the situation in Ukraine and bilateral relations.

“Had a very good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin. I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine,” Modi said on X.

The Indian president added that he looked forward to hosting Putin in India later this year, without specifying the date.

Had a very good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin. I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine. We also reviewed the progress in our bilateral agenda, and reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 8, 2025

Pause in conflict may be ‘close’

The calls came amid rising hopes for a breakthrough in the Ukraine war, now in its fourth year. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close, after speaking to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Tusk said Zelenskyy was “very cautious but optimistic” and that Ukraine was keen that Poland and other European countries play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement.

“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” he told a news conference on Friday. “There are hopes for this.”

Trump’s efforts to pressure Putin into stopping the fighting have so far delivered little progress. Russia’s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.

Almost two weeks ago, Trump moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia, as well as introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil, if no Kremlin moves towards a settlement were forthcoming.

The deadline expired on Friday. It was unclear what steps Trump intended to take as a consequence.

President Xi Jinping orders ‘all-out’ rescue operations to save the missing people, CCTV says.

At least 10 people have been killed and 33 are missing in flash floods in northwestern China’s Gansu province, according to state media.

“From August 7, continuous heavy rain … has triggered flash floods. As of 3:30pm (07:30 GMT) on August 8, 10 people have died and 33 are missing,” state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out” rescue operations with “utmost effort” to save the missing people, CCTV said.

Due to the “frequent occurrence of extreme weather”, Xi ordered all regions to “resolutely overcome complacency” and strengthen efforts to identify risks, the broadcaster added.

Footage shared by Chinese fire authorities on the social media platform Weibo showed rescuers guiding people through rushing grey water in a village.

Photos posted by Gansu’s government showed roads covered in silt and large stones.

Record rainfall has lashed China’s north and south in recent weeks in what meteorologists describe as extreme weather linked to climate change.

Heavy rains and flooding have killed at least 60 people across northern China, including Beijing, since late July.

Beijing warns Manila to stop ‘playing with fire’ after Marcos signals potential Taiwan conflict involvement.

China has sharply criticised Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr after he suggested his country would be drawn into a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan.

During a state visit to India this week, Marcos said the Philippines’ geographic proximity and the large Filipino community in Taiwan meant the country would be forced to get involved in the event of war.

“If there is an all-out war, then we will be drawn into it,” Marcos told Indian broadcaster Firstpost. “There are many, many Filipino nationals in Taiwan and that would be immediately a humanitarian problem.”

In response, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a strongly worded statement on Friday, warning Manila not to “play with fire” and urging it to uphold the one China principle.

“Geographical proximity and large overseas populations are not excuses for interfering in others’ internal affairs,” the statement read.

Tensions between China and the Philippines have intensified in recent years over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Both sides have accused each other of provocations, with altercations at sea involving ramming incidents, water cannon blasts, and clashes involving weapons such as spears and knives.

Beijing continues to assert that Taiwan is part of its territory and a breakaway province, a position Taipei rejects.

China also dismissed Marcos’s justification as undermining both international law and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations charter, saying his comments risk destabilising regional peace and harming the interests of the Philippine people.

Marcos’s trip to India also saw the signing of new security agreements aimed at strengthening defence ties between New Delhi and Manila, including cooperation between both countries’ armies, air forces and navies. Indian warships recently began joint patrols with the Philippine Navy in the contested South China Sea in a move likely to anger China.

In another sign of rising tensions, Philippine officials earlier this week condemned the launch of a Chinese rocket, which they said dropped suspected debris near a western province, alarming residents and threatening local ships and aircraft. No damage or injuries were reported.

The escalating maritime standoff has also increasingly drawn in the United States, which has a mutual defence pact with the Philippines. Washington has reaffirmed its commitment to defend Filipino forces, including coastguard personnel, aircraft and public vessels, should they come under attack anywhere in the South China Sea.

By&nbspAP with Eleanor Butler

Published on
08/08/2025 – 9:20 GMT+2

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Intel shares slumped on Thursday after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that the chipmaker’s CEO needed to resign.

“The CEO of Intel is highly conflicted and must resign, immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”

Trump made the post after Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary, expressing concern over CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s investments and ties to semiconductor firms that are reportedly linked to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army. Cotton asked the board whether Tan had divested his interests in these companies to eliminate any conflicts of interest.

It’s not immediately clear if Tan, who took over as Intel’s CEO in March, has done so.

In a statement, Intel said it was “deeply committed to advancing US national and economic security interests”. The firm said it was making “significant investments aligned with the President’s America First agenda”.

Cotton’s allegations

“In March 2025, Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO,” Cotton wrote in the letter. “Mr. Tan reportedly controls dozens of Chinese companies and has a stake in hundreds of Chinese advanced-manufacturing and chip firms. At least eight of these companies reportedly have ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.”

Cotton specifically called out Tan’s recent leadership of Cadence Design Systems in the letter. According to the US Department of Justice, Cadence, agreed in July to plead guilty to resolve charges that it violated export controls rules to sell hardware and software to China’s National University of Defense Technology, which is linked to the Chinese military.

Tan was the CEO of Cadence when the company violated the rules between 2015 and 2021.

The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security also fined Cadence $95 million for the same breaches, saying Cadence admitted that “employees of its Chinese subsidiary knowingly transferred sensitive US technology to entities that develop supercomputers in support of China’s military modernisation and nuclear weapons programs.”

Cadence did not immediately respond to AP requests.

The digital race

Tan previously launched the venture capital firm Walden International in 1987 to focus on funding tech start-ups, including chip makers.

China’s state media has described Tan as “actively” devoted to Chinese and Asian markets, having invested not only in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, but also China’s state-owned enterprise SMIC, which seeks to advance China’s chipmaking capabilities.

The demands made by Trump and Cotton come as economic and political rivalries between the US and China increasingly focus on the competition over chips, AI and other digital technologies that experts say will shape future economies and military conflicts.

Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has raised concerns that Chinese spies could be working at tech companies and defence contractors, using their positions to steal secrets or plant digital backdoors that give China access to classified systems and networks.

On Thursday the Arkansas Republican wrote to the Department of Defense, urging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ban all non-US citizens from jobs allowing them to access DoD networks. He has also demanded an investigation into Chinese citizens working for defence contractors.

“The US government recognises that China’s cyber capabilities pose one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by infiltration of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and supply chains,” Cotton wrote in an earlier letter, calling on the Pentagon to conduct the investigation.

National security officials have linked China’s government to hacking campaigns targeting prominent Americans and critical US systems.

“US companies who receive government grants should be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and adhere to strict security regulations,” Cotton wrote on the social platform X.

Playing catch-up

Intel had been a beneficiary of the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, receiving more than $8 billion (€6.9bn) in federal funding to build computer chip plants around the country.

Shares of the California company slid 3.5%, while markets, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq, gained ground.

Founded in 1968 at the start of the PC revolution, Intel missed the technological shift to mobile computing triggered by Apple’s 2007 release of the iPhone, and it has lagged behind more nimble chipmakers. Intel’s troubles have been magnified since the advent of artificial intelligence — a booming field where the chips made by once-smaller rival Nvidia have become tech’s hottest commodity.

Intel is shedding thousands of workers and cutting expenses, including some domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, as Tan tries to revive the fortunes of the struggling chipmaker.

The mosquito-borne virus has crossed the Taiwan Strait from southern China, where confirmed cases of chikungunya top 8,000.

Taiwan has reported its first confirmed case of chikungunya fever, imported from China, where a historic outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus is under way.

Chikungunya has swept through southern China in recent weeks, primarily in the manufacturing hub of Foshan on the Pearl River Delta, with cases rising to more than 8,000. The outbreak is the largest on record, according to Roger Hewson, virus surveillance lead at the United Kingdom’s Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Friday that the chikungunya virus was detected in a Taiwanese woman who had travelled to Foshan and returned to Taiwan on July 30.

It was the first case of its kind detected so far in 2025, though more than a dozen cases have been previously detected and originated in Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The CDC has raised its travel advisory for China’s Guangdong province, the epicentre of the outbreak, to level 2 out of 3, urging travellers to use “enhanced precautions”.

The virus can lead to high fever, rash, headache, nausea and fatigue lasting up to seven days, and muscle and joint pain that can last for several weeks.

“The outbreak in Foshan and surrounding areas of Guangdong province has unfolded rapidly and at a scale unprecedented for China,” Hewson said in a statement.

The surge is due to limited immunity in China and “environmental suitability” for the virus-carrying Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which breed in stagnant water, he said.

Chinese health authorities have responded with containment strategies ranging from household-level inspections and enforced bed nets, to drone-based fogging and even quarantines, reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hewson said.

The Associated Press news agency reported that residents of Foshan can be fined as much as up to 10,000 RMB ($1,400) for keeping water in outdoor containers – a popular breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The outbreak follows more than a month of typhoons and heavier-than-usual monsoon rains in China.

Last week, Hong Kong – located some 180km (110 miles) from Foshan – was hit by its worst August rainstorm since records began in 1884.

Chinese state media said despite the historic number of chikungunya cases, the outbreak appears to have finally peaked.

Foshan reported 2,892 local infections from July 27 to August 2, but no severe or fatal cases, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.

“The recent surge has been initially contained, with a downward trend in newly reported cases across the province,” Kang Min, director of the infectious disease control institute at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told Xinhua.

Bangkok, Thailand – A surge in rare earth mining in rebel-held pockets of Myanmar supplying Chinese processing plants is being blamed for toxic levels of heavy metals in Thai waterways, including the Mekong River.

China dominates the global refining of rare earth metals – key inputs in everything from wind turbines to advanced missile systems – but imports much of its raw material from neighbouring Myanmar, where the mines have been blamed for poisoning local communities.

Recent satellite images and water sample testing suggest the mines are spreading, along with the environmental damage they cause.

“Since the mining operation started, there is no protection for the local people,” Sai Hor Hseng, a spokesman at the Shan Human Rights Foundation, a local advocacy group based in eastern Myanmar’s Shan state, told Al Jazeera.

“They don’t care what happens to the environment,” he said, or those living downstream of the mines in Thailand.

An estimated 1,500 people rallied in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province in June, urging the Thai government and China to pressure the mining operators in Myanmar to stop polluting their rivers.

Villagers in Chiang Rai first noticed an odd orange-yellow tint to the Kok River – a tributary of the Mekong that enters Thailand from Myanmar – before the start of this year’s rainy season in May.

Repeated rounds of testing by Thai authorities since then have found levels of arsenic and lead in the river several times higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe.

Thai authorities advised locals living along the Kok to not even touch the water, while tests have also found excess arsenic levels in the Sai River, another tributary of the Mekong that flows from Myanmar into Thailand, as well as in the Mekong’s mainstream.

Locals are now worried about the harm that contaminated water could do to their crops, their livestock and themselves.

Arsenic is infamously toxic.

Medical studies have linked long-term human exposure to high levels of the chemical to neurological disorders, organ failure and cancer.

“This needs to be solved right now; it cannot wait until the next generation, for the babies to be deformed or whatever,” Pianporn Deetes, Southeast Asia campaign director at the advocacy group International Rivers, told Al Jazeera.

“People are concerned also about the irrigation, because … [they are] now using the rivers – the water from the Kok River and the Sai River – for their rice paddies, and it’s an important crop for the population here,” Pianporn said.

“We learned from other areas already … that this kind of activity should not happen in the upstream of the water source of a million people,” she said.

‘A very good correlation’

Thai authorities blame upstream mining in Myanmar for the toxic rivers, but they have been vague about the exact source or sources.

Rights groups and environmental activists say the mine sites are nestled in pockets of Shan state under the control of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a well-armed, secretive rebel group that runs two semi-autonomous enclaves in the area, one bordering China and the other Thailand.

That makes the sites hard to access. Not even Myanmar’s military regime dares to send troops into UWSA-held territory.

While some have blamed the recent river pollution on the UWSA’s gold mines, the latest tests in Thailand lay most of the fault on the mining of rare earth minerals.

In a study commissioned by the Thai government, Tanapon Phenrat, an associate professor of civil engineering at Naresuan University, took seven water samples from the Kok and surrounding rivers in early June.

Tanapon told Al Jazeera that the samples collected closest to the border with Myanmar showed the highest levels of heavy metals and confirmed that the source of the contamination lay upstream of Thailand in Shan state.

Significantly, Tanapon said, the water samples contained the same “fingerprint” of heavy metals, and in roughly the same concentrations, as had earlier water samples from Myanmar’s Kachin State, north of Shan, where rare earth mining has been thriving for the past decade.

“We compared that with the concentrations we found in the Kok River, and we found that it has a very good correlation,” Tanapon said.

“Concentrations in the Kok River can be attributed about 60 to 70 percent … [to] rare earth mining,” he added.

The presence of rare earth mines along the Kok River in Myanmar was first exposed by the Shan Human Rights Foundation in May.

Satellite images available on Google Earth showed two new mine sites inside the UWSA’s enclave on the Thai border developed over the past one to two years – one on the western slope of the river, another on the east.

The foundation also used satellite images to identify what it said are another 26 rare earth mines inside the UWSA’s enclave next to China.

All but three of those mines were built over the past few years, and many are located at the headwaters of the Loei River, yet another tributary of the Mekong.

Researchers who have studied Myanmar’s rare earth mining industry say the large, round mineral collection pools visible in the satellite images give the sites away as rare earth mines.

The Shan Human Rights Foundation says villagers living near the new mines in Shan state have also told how workers there are scooping up a pasty white powder from the collection pools, just as they have seen in online videos of the rare earth mines further north in Kachin.

‘Zero environmental monitoring’

Patrick Meehan, a lecturer at the University of Manchester in the UK who has studied Myanmar’s rare earth mines, said reports emerging from Shan state fit with what he knows of similar operations in Kachin.

“The way companies tend to operate in Myanmar is that there is zero pre-mining environmental assessment, zero environmental monitoring, and there are none of those sorts of regulations or protections in place,” Meehan said.

The leaching process being used involves pumping chemicals into the hillsides to draw the rare earth metals out of the rock. That watery mixture of chemicals and minerals is then pumped out of the ground and into the collection pools, where the rare earths are then separated and gathered up.

Without careful attention to keeping everything contained at a mine, said Meehan, the risks of contaminating local rivers and groundwater could be high.

Rare earth mines are situated close to rivers because of the large volumes of water needed for pumping the extractive chemicals into the hills, he said.

The contaminated water is then often pumped back into the river, he added, while the groundwater polluted by the leaching can end up in the river as well.

“There is definitely scope for that,” said Meehan.

He and others have tracked the effect such mines have already had in Kachin – where hundreds of mining sites now dot the state’s border with China – from once-teeming streams now barren of fish to rice stalks yielding fewer grains and livestock falling ill and dying after drinking from local creeks.

In a 2024 report, the environmental group Global Witness called the fallout from Kachin’s mining boom “devastating”.

Ben Hardman, Mekong legal director for the US advocacy group EarthRights International, said locals in Kachin have also told his team about mineworkers dying in unusually high numbers.

The worry now, he adds, is that Shan state and the neighbouring countries into which Myanmar’s rivers flow will suffer the same fate as has Kachin, especially if the mine sites continue to multiply as global demand for rare earth minerals grows.

“There’s a long history of rare earth mining causing serious environmental harms that are very long-term, and with pretty egregious health implications for communities,” Hardman said.

“That was the case in China in the 2010s, and is the case in Kachin now. And it’s the same situation now evolving in Shan state, and so we can expect to see the same harms,” he added.

‘You need to stop it at the source’

Most, if not all, of the rare earths mined in Myanmar are sent to China to be refined, processed, and either exported or put to use in a range of green-energy and, increasingly, military hardware.

But, unlike China, neither Myanmar, Laos nor Thailand have the sophisticated processing plants that can transform raw ore into valuable material, according to SFA (Oxford), a critical minerals and metals consulting firm.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, a local think tank, says Chinese customs data also show that Myanmar has been China’s main source of rare earths from abroad since at least 2017, including a record $1.4bn-worth in 2023.

Myanmar’s exports of rare earth minerals were growing at the same time as China was placing tough new curbs on mining them at home, after witnessing the environmental damage it was doing to its own communities. Buying the minerals from Myanmar has allowed China to outsource much of the problem.

That is why many are blaming not only the mine operators and the UWSA for the environmental fallout from Myanmar’s mines, but China.

The UWSA could not be reached for comment, and neither China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor its embassy in Myanmar replied to Al Jazeera’s emails seeking a response.

In a June 8 Facebook post, reacting to reports of Chinese-run mines in Myanmar allegedly polluting Thai rivers, the Chinese embassy in Thailand said all Chinese companies operating abroad had to follow local laws and regulations.

The embassy also said China was open to cooperating with Mekong River countries to protect the local environment, but gave no details on what that might entail.

Thailand has said it is working with both China and Myanmar to solve the problem.

In a bid to tackle the problem, though, the Thai government has proposed building dams along the affected rivers in Chiang Rai province to filter their waters for pollutants.

Local politicians and environmentalists question whether such dams would work.

International Rivers’ Pianporn Deetes said there was no known precedent of dams working in such a manner in rivers on the scale of the Mekong and its tributaries.

“If it’s [a] limited area, a small creek or in a faraway standalone mining area, it could work. It’s not going to work with this international river,” she said.

Naresuan University’s Tanapon said he was building computer models to study whether a series of cascading weirs – small, dam-like barriers that are built across a river to control water flow – could help.

But he, too, said such efforts would only mitigate the problem at best.

Dams and weirs, Tanapon said, “can just slow down or reduce the impact”.

“You need to stop it at the source,” he added.

United States President Donald Trump has fired off a social media message calling on the head of the US technology firm Intel to resign from his post as chief executive officer.

Trump’s decision to denounce Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan on Thursday morning sent the company’s stocks tumbling, amid the uncertainty about the future of its leadership.

“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” Trump wrote. “There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”

Trump’s post appeared to be a response to reports that Tan has invested nearly $200m in Chinese technology manufacturing and chip firms, including some with links to the country’s military.

But the president’s social media message also raises concerns about his apparent willingness to get involved in the affairs of private companies, even calling for dramatic changes in leadership and direction.

Scrutiny on Tan’s ties to China

Tan, a longtime technology investor, is relatively new to his post. He was appointed as Intel’s CEO on March 12, and he also serves on the company’s board of directors.

Previously, Tan served in leadership positions at the software company Cadence Design Systems, and he was a founding partner for the venture capital firm Walden Catalyst Ventures.

His personal investments — and the investments of the venture funds he manages — caught the public’s attention shortly after his appointment at Intel, though.

In April, the news agency Reuters reported that, between March 2012 and December 2024, Tan invested in Chinese firms that create technology for the People’s Liberation Army, China’s armed forces.

For some US politicians, that raised a conflict of interest.

On Wednesday, for instance, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas posted a letter on social media written to the chairman of Intel’s board of directors, Frank Yeary.

In it, he demanded more information about Tan’s hiring and his investments in China.

Cotton pointed out that, on July 28, Cadence Design Systems agreed to plead guilty to federal charges concerning the sale of technology and intellectual property to China’s National University of Defense Technology.

That plea deal resulted in criminal and civil penalties of more than $140m.

“I write to express concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and its potential impact on US national security,” Cotton wrote in his letter to Yeary.

“Mr Tan reportedly controls dozens of Chinese companies and has a stake in hundreds of Chinese advanced-manufacturing and chip firms. At least eight of these companies reportedly have ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.”

In an accompanying message to his social media followers, Cotton added that Intel “owes Congress an explanation”. Intel and Tan have yet to respond to the concerns.

Trump pushes ‘America First’ plan

For years, the US and China have been locked in tense competition for economic and political dominance, and the US has repeatedly accused China of attempting to poach American innovation and spy on its technology firms.

China, meanwhile, has denied such allegations, describing them as part of a US smear campaign.

Founded in 1968, Intel has long been a flagship US technology firm, known for producing computer parts like microprocessors. But in recent decades, the company has struggled to keep pace with its competitors, particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed Silicon Valley, Intel’s longtime home.

Trump, however, has sought to bolster domestic manufacturing with his “America First” economic agenda, which leverages tariffs to discourage the import of products from abroad.

On Tuesday, the Republican leader even said he planned to impose 100-percent tariffs on foreign chips and semiconductors sold in the US.

But Trump has faced criticism for testing the boundaries of his executive power — and, in some cases, seeking to impose his will on the running of private companies.

Since taking office for a second term, for instance, Trump has withheld federal funds from private universities in order to extract guarantees that those institutions would eliminate their diversity initiatives and implement disciplinary reforms, among other demands.

In an interview with Reuters, analysts appeared split over whether Trump was overplaying his hand.

“Many investors likely believe that President Trump has his hand in too many cookie jars, it’s just another signal that he’s very serious about trying to bring business back to the US,” said David Wagner, the head of equity and a portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, which has invested in Intel.

Meanwhile, Phil Blancato, the CEO of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, told Reuters that Trump ousting Tan could have a chilling effect on US business.

“It would be setting a very unfortunate precedent,” Blancato said. “You don’t want American presidents dictating who runs companies, but certainly his opinion has merit and weight.”

It is unclear how Trump’s pressure campaign against Tan may affect Intel’s future.

Last year, Intel received $8bn in subsidies under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, to build further chip manufacturing plants in the US.

Angela Rayner has given China two weeks to explain why parts of its plans for a new mega-embassy in London are redacted.

The deputy prime minister’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government sent a letter asking for further information and requested a response by 20 August, the BBC understands.

Beijing’s plans for the new embassy have sparked fears its location – very near London’s financial district – could pose an espionage risk. Residents nearby also fear it would pose a security risk to them and attract large protests.

The BBC has contacted the Chinese embassy in London for comment.

A final planning decision on the controversial plans will be made by 9 September, the BBC understands.

In a letter seen by the PA news agency, Rayner, who as housing secretary is responsible for overseeing planning matters, asks planning consultants representing the Chinese embassy to explain why drawings of the planned site are blacked out.

The Home Office and the Foreign Office also received copies of the letter.

It notes that the Home Office requested a new “hard perimeter” be placed around the embassy site, to prevent “unregulated public access”, and says this could require a further planning application.

There are concerns, held by some opponents, that the Royal Mint Court site could allow China to infiltrate the UK’s financial system by tapping into fibre optic cables carrying sensitive data for firms in the City of London.

Pro-democracy campaigners from Hong Kong also fear Beijing could use the huge embassy to harass political opponents and even detain them. Last month, the UK condemned cash offers from Hong Kong authorities for people who help in the arrest of pro-democracy activists living in Britain.

Alicia Kearns, the shadow national security minister, said: “No surprises here – Labour’s rush to appease Xi Jinping’s demands for a new embassy demonstrated a complacency when it came to keeping our people safe. Having deluded themselves for so long, they’ve recognised we were right to be vigilant.”

Responding to security concerns earlier this week, the Chinese embassy told the BBC it was “committed to promoting understanding and the friendship between the Chinese and British peoples and the development of mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. Building the new embassy would help us better perform such responsibilities”.

China bought the old Royal Mint Court for £255m in 2018. At 20,000 square metres, the complex will be the biggest embassy in Europe if it goes ahead.

The plan involves a cultural centre and housing for 200 staff, but in the basement, behind security doors, there are also rooms with no identified use on the plans.

Beijing’s application for the embassy had previously been rejected by Tower Hamlets Council in 2022 over safety and security concerns.

It resubmitted an identical application in August 2024, one month after Labour came to power.

On 23 August, Sir Keir Starmer phoned Chinese President Xi Jinping for their first talks. Sir Keir confirmed afterwards that Xi had raised the embassy issue.

Rayner has since exercised her power to take the matter out of the council’s hands amid attempts by the government to engage with China after a cooling of relations during the final years of Conservative Party rule.

Senior ministers have signalled they are in favour if minor adjustments are made to the plan.

Russian Pacific Fleet says joint patrol with China in the Asia Pacific will follow naval drill in the Sea of Japan.

Russian and Chinese naval vessels plan to conduct a joint patrol in the Asia Pacific region, following recent exercises in the Sea of Japan, Russia’s official Interfax has reported.

Citing a statement on Wednesday from the Russian Pacific Fleet’s press service, Interfax said that ships from the Russian Navy and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy “will form a new task group to carry out joint patrol missions in the Asia-Pacific region”.

“After replenishing supplies from logistics vessels, the crews of the Russian Navy and the PLA Navy will form a new detachment to carry out joint patrol tasks in the Asia-Pacific region,” the news agency said.

Russia is conducting a series of military exercises with China in response to the build-up of US military potential in the Asia Pacific region, Interfax said, citing Russia’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, in 2022.

Moscow and Beijing have already conducted joint air patrols in the Asia Pacific region since 2019, it added.

The joint patrol announcement comes as the two countries conclude five days of joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan that focused on anti-submarine and air defence missions.

During the final phase of the exercises, Russia’s large anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs and the corvette Gromky, together with the Chinese destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, carried out live-fire drills while crews practised searching for and neutralising a mock enemy submarine, Interfax reported.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet earlier said that the drills were defensive in nature and not directed against any other countries.

The reported formation of the Asia Pacific joint patrol comes as China modernises and upgrades its naval fleet to become a “blue water” force, capable of carrying out long-range operations in the world’s oceans, similar to the United States and other Western forces.

Russia and China, which signed a “no-limits” strategic partnership shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, conduct regular exercises to rehearse coordination between their armed forces and send a deterrent signal to adversaries.

Prosecutors say two men ‘knowingly and willfully’ used California-based company to evade export controls on AI chips.

Authorities in the United States have charged two Chinese citizens with shipping tens of millions of dollars’ worth of advanced Nvidia chips to China in breach of export controls.

Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang are alleged to have “knowingly and willfully” exported the graphic processing units (GPUs) used to power artificial intelligence without authorisation from October 2022 to July 2025, the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday.

Export records indicate that Geng and Yang, both 28, organised at least 21 shipments through their El Monte, California-based company ALX Solutions Inc to companies in Singapore and Malaysia, the Justice Department said.

The exports included a December 2024 shipment of Nvidia H100 GPUs – described as the most powerful chip on the market – that was “falsely labelled” and had not obtained the necessary licence from the US Department of Commerce, the Justice Department said.

According to prosecutors, ALX Solutions received payments from firms in Hong Kong and China, including a $1m sum from a China-based company in January 2024, rather than the companies that accepted the shipments.

Prosecutors said a search of ALX Solutions’s office and Geng and Yang’s phones last week revealed “incriminating communications”, including communications about shipping chips to China through Malaysia to evade US export restrictions.

Geng and Yang face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted under the Export Control Reform Act.

Al Jazeera could not immediately locate the accused’s lawyers for comment.

Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia said the case showed that “smuggling is a nonstarter”.

“We primarily sell our products to well-known partners, including OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], who help us ensure that all sales comply with US export control rules,” a company spokesperson said.

“Even relatively small exporters and shipments are subject to thorough review and scrutiny, and any diverted products would have no service, support, or updates.”

The US government has banned the export of the most advanced chips to China amid a heated battle for technological supremacy between Washington and Beijing.

US officials have claimed that restrictions, many of which were introduced under former US President Joe Biden, are needed to safeguard national security.

China, which has hit back with its own export controls against the US, has accused Washington of undermining global trade and abusing its dominance in tech.

Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that Washington had agreed to reverse its ban on the sale of its H20 GPU to China following discussions with US President Donald Trump.

Huang said the lifting of the export ban on the H20, which was specifically designed for the Chinese market and is less powerful than the H100, would encourage “nations worldwide to choose  America” for their AI models.

United States health officials are urging travellers to remain vigilant as a mosquito-borne virus continues to circulate across parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Indian Ocean.

Since the beginning of 2025, there have been approximately 240,000 chikungunya virus infections and 90 deaths in 16 countries, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

In China, an outbreak has infected roughly 7,000 people since late June, with most cases concentrated in the city of Foshan, in Guangdong province, just north of Hong Kong. This marks the country’s largest chikungunya outbreak since the virus was first identified there in 2008.

Here is what we know about the disease and how it is spreading.

What is the chikungunya virus?

Chikungunya is a viral disease that is spread through the bite of infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. These mosquitoes also carry and spread dengue, yellow fever and the Zika virus.

The name, chikungunya, derives from a word in the Kimakonde language, spoken in Tanzania and Mozambique, meaning “to become contorted”.

In most cases, patients will feel better within a week. In many cases, however, the joint pain can last for months or even years.

There is no cure for the chikungunya virus, but deaths are rare. If an infected mosquito bites a healthy human, it injects the virus into the bloodstream.

People most at risk of serious illness from chikungunya include newborns, older adults and those with existing health problems such as heart disease or diabetes.

There is no cure for the chikungunya virus, but the death rate is low, except in high-risk populations.

If an infected mosquito bites a healthy human, it injects the virus into the bloodstream. If a non-infected mosquito bites a person who is already infected, it sucks the virus from that person’s blood and becomes a carrier capable of transmitting the virus to others through bites.

How bad is the current spread of the virus?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the current surge in cases began in early 2025, with major outbreaks in Indian Ocean Islands, including La Reunion, Mayotte and Mauritius.

In La Reunion, more than 47,500 cases of chikungunya and 12 associated deaths were reported up to May 2025, with sustained high transmission across the island, according to the WHO. The ECDC also reports that as of July 18, there were more than 54,000 cases reported from La Reunion.

This is now the most serious chikungunya outbreak in La Reunion since the 2005–2006 epidemic, which saw an estimated 244,000 to more than 300,000 cases, and prompted large-scale public health efforts to control mosquito breeding and limit transmission.

The virus has also spread to other countries, including Madagascar, Somalia and Kenya, and has shown signs of epidemic-level transmission in parts of Southeast Asia, as well as India, where financial capital Mumbai has seen a surge in cases since July.

The WHO has also raised concerns about the rising number of imported chikungunya cases in Europe. Since May 1, about 800 imported cases have been reported in mainland France.

According to the ECDC, the Americas as a region have reported the highest number of chikungunya cases globally. As of mid-July 2025, the countries with the most cases in the region include Brazil (185,553), Bolivia (4,721), Argentina (2,836) and Peru (55).

In China, infections have been reported in at least 12 cities across southern Guangdong province, in addition to Foshan.

Chinese authorities said that an “imported case triggered local transmission” in July, but did not specify where the infection originated. According to experts, rising global temperatures have led to warmer and wetter weather, allowing mosquitoes to thrive.

Separately, on Saturday, Hong Kong confirmed its first case of chikungunya: a 12-year-old boy who developed a fever, rash and joint pain since July 31, after visiting Foshan. This was the territory’s first case of the virus in six years.

How are China and other countries fighting the spread?

According to a Bloomberg news report, China has promised to take swift and decisive action to contain the spread of the chikungunya virus.

Drones are being used to find places where mosquitoes are breeding. At the same time, scientists are releasing large “elephant mosquitoes” – about 2cm (0.8 inches) long – whose larvae eat the smaller mosquitoes that spread the virus. Health experts hope these mosquito helpers will play an important role in stopping the outbreak.

According to a report by the BBC, residents of affected areas in China have been ordered to eliminate standing water in and around their homes – including in flowerpots, coffee machines and empty bottles. Noncompliance may result in fines of up to 10,000 yuan (approximately $1,400), and in more serious cases, people could face criminal charges for “obstructing the prevention of infectious diseases”.

Citing local sources, The New York Times said that in some instances, infected residents in Foshan are being moved to “quarantine wards”, where they are kept behind mosquito nets and screens. Some patients also say they were given no choice but to seek treatment at their own expense.

In other places, such as La Reunion and Mayotte, authorities have also launched enhanced surveillance, mosquito control initiatives and targeted vaccination efforts.

The Basque Country in Spain activated preventive protocols after a case was detected in Hendaye, just across the border in France. The protocols include increased surveillance in border towns and encouraging people to make reports through apps such as Mosquito Alert.

How can chikungunya be prevented and treated?

Health authorities advise protecting oneself against mosquito bites as the most effective strategy against the spread of chikungunya.

This may involve wearing long sleeves and trousers, applying mosquito repellents, removing bodies of standing water where mosquitoes can breed, and staying in closed, air-conditioned spaces indoors or behind mosquito netting when outdoors.

While there are no specific medicines to treat the virus, rest, fluids and pain relievers may help alleviate symptoms, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, some pain relievers may be unsafe during a suspected infection. The CDC recommends avoiding non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) until dengue is ruled out, as they can raise the risk of bleeding.

Record-breaking rains flooded parts of Hong Kong, disrupting flights, schools, and courts as the city recorded its highest August rainfall since 1884. The storm followed deadly flash floods in southern China that killed five people.

The exercise coincided with President Ferdinand Marcos’s departure for a five-day trip to India, where he said he would look to deepen maritime ties.

India and the Philippines have staged their first joint sail and naval exercises in the disputed South China Sea.

The two-day joint military deployment that kicked off on Sunday is likely to anger China, which claims nearly the entire key waterway and has separate territorial disputes with the two Asian countries.

Philippine Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jr said on Monday that the joint sail took place inside his country’s exclusive economic zone.

“We did not experience any untoward incidents, but there are still those shadowing us – as we had already expected,” Brawner told reporters, without naming China.

In past joint patrols with other foreign navies, Chinese navy and coastguard ships have kept watch from a distance, according to the Philippine military.

Indian navy ships that took part included guided missile destroyer INS Delhi, tanker INS Shakti and corvette INS Kiltan. The Philippines deployed two frigates, BRP Miguel Malvar and BRP Jose Rizal.

The exercise coincided with President Ferdinand Marcos’s departure for a five-day trip to India, where he said he would look to deepen maritime ties and seek cooperation on sectors including defence, pharmaceuticals and agriculture.

Brawner, meanwhile, expressed hope that Filipino forces could engage India’s military in more joint manoeuvres in the future.

The drill “sends a powerful signal of solidarity, strength in partnership and the energy of cooperation between two vibrant democracies in the Indo-Pacific”, he said.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that territorial and maritime disputes should be resolved between the countries directly involved, and no third party should intervene.

In response to a question last week about the Philippines’ plans to build up military cooperation, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense called the country a “troublemaker” that has aligned itself with foreign forces to stir up trouble, in what China deems its own territorial waters.

“China never wavers in its resolve and will safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and take resolute countermeasures against any provocations by the Philippine side,” spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang had told reporters.

The South China Sea is a strategic shipping route where $3 trillion of annual shipborne commerce takes place.

A 2016 ruling of an international arbitral tribunal found China’s sweeping claims have no basis under international law, a decision Beijing rejects.

Over the past two decades, the posture of the United States towards China has evolved from economic cooperation to outright antagonism. US media outlets and politicians have engaged in persistent anti-China rhetoric, while the US government has imposed trade restrictions and sanctions on China and pursued military build-up close to Chinese territory. Washington wants people to believe that China poses a threat.

China’s rise indeed threatens US interests, but not in the way the US political elite seeks to frame it.

The US relationship with China needs to be understood in the context of the capitalist world system. Capital accumulation in the core states, often glossed as the “Global North”, depends on cheap labour and cheap resources from the periphery and semi-periphery, the so-called “Global South”.

This arrangement is crucial to ensuring high profits for the multinational firms that dominate global supply chains. The systematic price disparity between the core and periphery also enables the core to achieve a large net-appropriation of value from the periphery through unequal exchange in international trade.

Ever since the 1980s, when China opened up to Western investment and trade, it has been a crucial part of this arrangement, providing a major source of labour for Western firms – labour that is cheap but also highly skilled and highly productive. For instance, much of Apple’s production relies on Chinese labour. According to research by the economist Donald A Clelland, if Apple had to pay Chinese and East Asian workers at the same rate as a US worker, this would have cost them an additional $572 per iPad in 2011.

But over the past two decades, wages in China have increased quite dramatically. Around 2005, the manufacturing labour cost per hour in China was lower than in India, less than $1 per hour. In the years since, China’s hourly labour costs have increased to more than $8 per hour, while India’s are now only about $2 per hour. Indeed, wages in China are now higher than in every other developing country in Asia. This is a major, historical development.

This has happened for several key reasons. For one, surplus labour in China has been increasingly absorbed into the wage-labour economy, which has amplified workers’ bargaining power. At the same time, the current leadership of President Xi Jinping has expanded the role of the state in China’s economy, strengthening public provisioning systems – including public healthcare and public housing – that have further improved the position of workers.

These are positive changes for China – and specifically for Chinese workers – but they pose a severe problem for Western capital. Higher wages in China impose a constraint on the profits of Western firms that operate there or that depend on Chinese manufacturing for intermediate parts and other key inputs.

The other problem, for the core states, is that the increase in China’s wages and prices is reducing its exposure to unequal exchange. During the low-wage era of the 1990s, China’s export-to-import ratio with the core was extremely high. In other words, China had to export very large quantities of goods in order to obtain necessary imports. Today, this ratio is much lower, representing a dramatic improvement in China’s terms of trade, substantially reducing the core’s ability to appropriate value from China.

Given all this, capitalists in the core states are now desperate to do something to restore their access to cheap labour and resources. One option – increasingly promoted by the Western business press – is to relocate industrial production to other parts of Asia where wages are cheaper. But this is costly in terms of lost production, the need to find new staff, and other supply chain disruptions. The other option is to force Chinese wages back down. Hence, the attempts by the United States to undermine the Chinese government and destabilise the Chinese economy – including through economic warfare and the constant threat of military escalation.

Ironically, Western governments sometimes justify their opposition to China on the grounds that China’s exports are too cheap. It is often claimed that China “cheats” in international trade, by artificially suppressing the exchange rate for its currency, the renminbi. The problem with this argument, however, is that China abandoned this policy around a decade ago. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist Jose Antonio Ocampo noted in 2017, “In recent years, China has rather been making efforts to avoid a depreciation of the renminbi, sacrificing a large amount of reserves. This may imply that, if anything, this currency is now overvalued.” China did eventually permit a devaluation in 2019, when tariffs imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump increased pressure on the renminbi. But this was a normal response to a change in market conditions, not an attempt to suppress the renminbi below its market rate.

The US largely supported the Chinese government in the period when its currency was undervalued, including through loans from the IMF and World Bank. The West turned decisively against China in the mid-2010s, at precisely the moment when the country began to raise its prices and challenge its position as a peripheral supplier of cheap inputs to Western-dominated supply chains.

The second element that’s driving US hostility towards China is technology. Beijing has used industrial policy to prioritise technological development in strategic sectors over the past decade, and has achieved remarkable progress. It now has the world’s largest high-speed rail network, manufactures its own commercial aircraft, leads the world on renewable energy technology and electric vehicles, and enjoys advanced medical technology, smartphone technology, microchip production, artificial intelligence, etc. The tech news coming out of China has been dizzying. These are achievements that we only expect from high-income countries, and China is doing it with almost 80 percent less GDP per capita than the average “advanced economy”. It is unprecedented.

This poses a problem for the core states because one of the main pillars of the imperial arrangement is that they need to maintain a monopoly over necessary technologies like capital goods, medicines, computers, aircraft and so on. This forces the “Global South” into a position of dependency, so they are forced to export large quantities of their cheapened resources in order to obtain these necessary technologies. This is what sustains the core’s net-appropriation through unequal exchange.

China’s technological development is now breaking Western monopolies, and may give other developing countries alternative suppliers for necessary goods at more affordable prices. This poses a fundamental challenge to the imperial arrangement and unequal exchange.

The US has responded by imposing sanctions designed to cripple China’s technological development. So far, this has not worked; if anything, it has increased incentives for China to develop sovereign technological capacities. With this weapon mostly neutralised, the US wants to resort to warmongering, the main objective of which would be to destroy China’s industrial base, and divert China’s investment capital and productive capacities towards defence. The US wants to go to war with China not because China poses some kind of military threat to the American people, but because Chinese development undermines the interests of imperial capital.

Western claims about China posing some kind of military threat are pure propaganda. The material facts tell a fundamentally different story. In fact, China’s military spending per capita is less than the global average, and 1/10th that of the US alone. Yes, China has a big population, but even in absolute terms, the US-aligned military bloc spends over seven times more on military power than China does. The US controls eight nuclear weapons for every one that China has.

China may have the power to prevent the US from imposing its will on it, but it does not have the power to impose its will on the rest of the world in the way that the core states do. The narrative that China poses some kind of military threat is wildly overblown.

In fact, the opposite is true. The US has hundreds of military bases and facilities around the world. A significant number of them are stationed near China – in Japan and South Korea. By contrast, China has only one foreign military base, in Djibouti, and zero military bases near US borders.

Furthermore, China has not fired a single bullet in international warfare in over 40 years, while during this time the US has invaded, bombed or carried out regime-change operations in over a dozen Global South countries. If there is any state that poses a known threat to world peace and security, it is the US.

The real reason for Western warmongering is because China is achieving sovereign development and this is undermining the imperial arrangement on which Western capital accumulation depends. The West will not let global economic power slip from its hands so easily.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Joint Sea-2025 exercises begin in waters near Russian port of Vladivostok and will last for three days, China’s Defence Ministry says.

China and Russia have begun joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan as they seek to reinforce their partnership and counterbalance what they see as a United States-led global order.

The Chinese and Russian governments have deepened their ties in recent years, with China providing an economic lifeline to Russia in the face of Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Joint Sea-2025 exercises began in waters near the Russian port of Vladivostok and will last for three days, China’s Ministry of National Defence said in a statement on Sunday.

The two sides will hold “submarine rescue, joint anti-submarine, air defence and anti-missile operations, and maritime combat”.

Four Chinese vessels, including guided-missile destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, are participating in the exercises, alongside Russian ships, the ministry said.

After the drills, the two countries will conduct naval patrols in “relevant waters of the Pacific”.

China and Russia have carried out annual drills for several years, with the “Joint Sea” exercises beginning in 2012.

Last year’s drills were held along China’s southern coast.

With this year’s drills in the Sea of Japan, in its annual report last month, Japan’s Ministry of Defence warned that China’s growing military cooperation with Russia poses serious security concerns.

“The exercise is defensive in nature and is not directed against other countries,” the Russian Navy Pacific Fleet said earlier this week, according to a report by the US Naval Institute’s online news and analysis portal.

On Friday, the Chinese Defence Ministry said this year’s exercises were aimed at “further deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership” of the two countries.

China has never denounced Russia’s more than three-year war nor called for it to withdraw its troops, and many of Ukraine’s allies, including the US, believe that Beijing has provided support to Moscow.

European leaders asked China last month to use its influence to pressure Russia to end the war, now in its fourth year, but there was no sign that Beijing would do so.

China, however, insists it is a neutral party, regularly calling for an end to the fighting while also accusing Western countries of prolonging the conflict by arming Ukraine.

Houayxay, Laos – Fishing went well today for Khon, a Laotian fisherman, who lives in a floating house built from plastic drums, scrap metal and wood on the Mekong River.

“I caught two catfish,” the 52-year-old tells Al Jazeera proudly, lifting his catch for inspection.

Khon’s simple houseboat contains all he needs to live on this mighty river: A few metal pots, a fire to cook food on and to keep warm by at night, as well as some nets and a few clothes.

What Khon does not always have is fish.

“There are days when I catch nothing. It’s frustrating,” he said.

“The water levels change all the time because of the dams. And now they say the river is polluted, too. Up there in Myanmar, they dig in the mountains. Mines, or something like that. And all that toxic stuff ends up here,” he adds.

Khon lives in Laos’s northwestern Bokeo province on one of the most scenic stretches of the Mekong River as it meanders through the heart of the Golden Triangle – the borderland shared by Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

This remote region has long been infamous for drug production and trafficking.

Now it is caught up in the global scramble for gold and rare earth minerals, crucial for the production of new technologies and used in everything from smartphones to electric cars.

Over the past year, rivers in this region, such as the Ruak, Sai and Kok – all tributaries of the Mekong – have shown abnormal levels of arsenic, lead, nickel and manganese, according to Thailand’s Pollution Control Department.

Arsenic, in particular, has exceeded World Health Organization safety limits, prompting health warnings for riverside communities.

These tributaries feed directly into the Mekong and contamination has spread to parts of the river’s mainstream. The effects have been observed in Laos, prompting the Mekong River Commission to declare the situation “moderately serious”.

“Recent official water quality testing clearly indicates that the Mekong River on the Thai-Lao border is contaminated with arsenic,” Pianporn Deetes, Southeast Asia campaigns director for the advocacy group International Rivers, told Al Jazeera.

“This is alarming and just the first chapter of the crisis, if the mining continues,” Pianporn said.

“Fishermen have recently caught diseased, young catfish. This is a matter of regional public health, and it needs urgent action from governments,” she added.

The source of the heavy metals contamination is believed to be upriver in Myanmar’s Shan State, where dozens of unregulated mines have sprung up as the search for rare earth minerals intensifies globally.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said at least a dozen, and possibly as many as 20, mines focused on gold and rare earth extraction have been established in southern Shan State over the past year alone.

Myanmar is now four years into a civil war and lawlessness reigns in the border area, which is held by two powerful ethnic armed groups: the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

Myanmar’s military government has “no real control”, Abuza said, apart from holding Tachileik town, the region’s main border crossing between Thailand and Myanmar.

Neither the RCSS nor the UWSA are “fighting the junta”, he said, explaining how both are busy enriching themselves from the chaos in the region and the rush to open mines.

“In this vacuum, mining has exploded – likely with Chinese traders involved. The military in Naypyidaw can’t issue permits or enforce environmental rules, but they still take their share of the profits,” Abuza said.

‘Alarming decline’

Pollution from mining is not the Mekong River’s only ailment.

For years, the health of the river has been degraded by a growing chain of hydropower dams that have drastically altered its natural rhythm and ecology.

In the Mekong’s upper reaches, inside China, almost a dozen huge hydropower dams have been built, including the Xiaowan and Nuozhadu dams, which are said to be capable of holding back a huge amount of the river’s flow.

Further downstream, Laos has staked its economic future on hydropower.

According to the Mekong Dam Monitor, which is hosted by the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, DC, at least 75 dams are now operational on the Mekong’s tributaries, and two in Laos – Xayaburi and Don Sahong – are directly on the mainstream river.

As a rule, hydropower is a cleaner alternative to coal.

But the rush to dam the Mekong is driving another type of environmental crisis.

According to WWF and the Mekong River Commission, the Mekong River basin once supported about 60 million people and provided up to 25 percent of the world’s freshwater fish catch.

Today, one in five fish species in the Mekong is at risk of extinction, and the river’s sediment and nutrient flows have been severely reduced, as documented in a 2023–2024 Mekong Dam Monitor report and research by International Rivers.

“The alarming decline in fish populations in the Mekong is an urgent wake-up call for action to save these extraordinary – and extraordinarily important – species, which underpin not only the region’s societies and economies but also the health of the Mekong’s freshwater ecosystems,” the WWF’s Asia Pacific Regional Director Lan Mercado said at the launch of a 2024 report titled The Mekong’s Forgotten Fishes.

In Houayxay, the capital of Bokeo province, the markets appeared mostly absent of fish during a recent visit.

At Kad Wang View, the town’s main market, the fish stalls were nearly deserted.

“Maybe this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow,” said Mali, a vendor in her 60s. In front of her, Mali had arranged her small stock of fish in a circle, perhaps hoping to make the display look fuller for potential customers.

At another market, Sydonemy, just outside Houayxay town, the story was the same. The fish stalls were bare.

“Sometimes the fish come, sometimes they don’t. We just wait,” another vendor said.

“There used to be giant fish here,” recalled Vilasai, 53, who comes from a fishing family but now works as a taxi driver.

“Now the river gives us little. Even the water for irrigation – people are scared to use it. No one knows if it’s still clean,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the pollution from Myanmar’s mines.

‘The river used to be predictable’

Ian G Baird, professor of geography and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said upstream dams – especially those in China – have had serious downstream effects in northern Thailand and Laos.

“The ecosystem and the lives that depend on the river evolved to adapt to specific hydrological conditions,” Baird told Al Jazeera.

“But since the dams were built, those conditions have changed dramatically. There are now rapid water level fluctuations in the dry season, which used to be rare, and this has negative impacts on both the river and the people,” he said.

Another major effect is the reversal of the river’s natural cycle.

“Now there is more water in the dry season and less during the rainy season. That reduces flooding and the beneficial ecological effects of the annual flood pulse,” Baird explained.

“The dams hold water during the rainy season and release it in the dry season to maximise energy output and profits. But that also kills seasonally flooded forests and disrupts the river’s ecological function,” he said.

Bun Chan, 45, lives with his wife Nanna Kuhd, 40, on a floating house near Houayxay. He fishes while his wife sells whatever he catches at the local market.

On a recent morning, he cast his net again and again – but for nothing.

“Looks like I won’t catch anything today,” Bun Chan told Al Jazeera as he pulled up his empty net.

“The other day I caught a few, but we didn’t sell them. We’re keeping them in cages in the water, so at least we have something to eat if I don’t catch more,” he said.

Hom Phan has been a fisherman on the Mekong his entire life.

He steers his wooden boat across the river, following a route he knows by instinct. In some parts of the river, the current is strong enough now to drag everything under, the 67-year-old says.

All around him, the silence is broken only by the chug of his small outboard engine and the calls of distant birds.

“The river used to be predictable. Now we don’t know when it will rise or fall,” Hom Phan said.

“Fish can’t find their spawning grounds. They’re disappearing. And we might too, if nothing changes,” he told Al Jazeera.

Evening approaches in Houayxay, and Khon, the fisherman, rolls up his nets and prepares dinner in his floating home.

As he waits for the fire to catch to cook a meal, he quietly contemplates the great river he lives on.

Despite the dams in China, the pollution from mines in neighbouring Myanmar, and the increasing difficulty in landing the catch he relies on to survive, Khon was outwardly serene as he considered his next day of fishing.

With his eyes fixed on the waters that flowed deeply beneath his home, he said with a smile: “We try again tomorrow.”

AN XXL Labubu doll worth more than £100,000 was uncovered by Hong Kong police during a major raid on Tuesday morning.

The gang, suspected of laundering £4 billion, had been under surveillance for two and a half years – but police never expected to find a giant plush toy among their illicit haul.

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According to the South Morning China Post, the seized goods belonged to the Triad syndicate – one of the oldest and most notorious criminal organisations in China.

Hong Kong police launched a large-scale raid on Tuesday, writing in a post on X: “When the time was ripe – the HKPF mounted the territory-wide anti-triad ‘Operation HIDDENARROW’ on July 29, 2025.”

The force seized €780,000 in cash, 11,000 bottles of wine, luxury watches, gold and a 5ft2 Labubu doll.

The figure is said to be rare – one of fifteen of its kind in the world.

A similar piece went under the hammer in Beijing in June for around £113,000.

As many as 82 suspects were reportedly arrested during the operation – 55 men and 27 women, ranging in age from 19 to 78.

Among them was the alleged 44-year-old ringleader.

He is suspected of running the operation and involving friends and family in the money laundering scheme.

Police added on X: “The ringleader manipulated his family & friends as well as the members of his gang into laundering the crime proceeds via calculated means.”

They listed this means as “continuously laundering the illicit funds via a trust company” and “committing #LoanFraud – using some seemingly lawful import trades as fronts.”

The gang’s funds came from prostitution, drug trafficking and illegal gambling, according to police.

Police said they froze assets worth around £115 million.

It’s still unclear whether Triad was banking on a rise in the Labubu doll’s value, were fans of the character or whether the toy might be a fake.

Labubus have taken the internet by storm – with Chinese toymaker Pop Mart’s valuation skyrocketing to £31.6bn.

The cult collectable dolls have been spotted dangling from the designer bags of Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and David Beckham.

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President Donald Trump has unveiled new reciprocal tariffs on imports from dozens of countries, ranging from 10 percent to 41 percent, forging ahead with his efforts to reshape international trade.

On Thursday, the White House issued a statement entitled “Further Modifying the Reciprocal Tariff Rates”, in which some 69 trading partners and their respective “adjusted” tariff rates were listed.

These are changes to import levies since the tariffs announced on April 2 (and later paused until August 1), the day Donald Trump referred to as “Liberation Day”. Rates have dropped for most countries, but not all. Most of the new tariffs will go into effect on August 7.

Imports from roughly 40 countries will face a new 15 percent rate on goods they export to the United States, while other nations’ products will be hit with higher duties. The United Kingdom and Australia will pay 10 percent.

One notable exception from Trump’s latest tariff list is China, the US’s third-largest trading partner. So, what’s the current state of play between the two countries?

How are US-China trade talks going?

Top officials from the US and China failed to agree on extending a 90-day pause on tariffs on Tuesday during the latest round of talks held in Stockholm, Sweden.

Any renewal of the pause, which is due to expire on August 12, will ultimately be up to Trump, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

The talks, which took place in Rosenbad, the seat of government where the Swedish prime minister’s office is located, were aimed at defusing a new trade spat between the world’s two biggest economies.

The latest meeting, which was attended by Bessent and Vice Premier He Lifeng for Beijing, concluded just two days after Trump announced a new trade deal with the European Union.

It was the third meeting between the US and China since April, at which point the two sides had slapped each other with tariffs exceeding 100 percent in an escalating trade war.

On May 12, the two agreed a 90-day tariff pause in Geneva, easing a costly logjam which had upended trade. During the pause, US tariffs have been reduced from 145 percent to 30 percent, and Chinese duties from 125 percent to 10 percent.

But without a new trading agreement in place, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil if US and Chinese tariffs restart at triple-digit levels that would amount to a bilateral trade embargo.

What happened at the Stockholm meeting?

After the meeting, China’s deputy commerce minister, Li Chenggang, said both sides were “fully aware of the importance of safeguarding a stable and sound China-US trade and economic relationship”.

He told Chinese media that the two sides had held “candid and constructive exchanges”.

For his part, Bessent told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that the US had built momentum with recent US agreements with Japan and the EU. He remained sanguine about China.

“Just to tamp down that rhetoric, the meetings were very constructive. We just haven’t given the sign off,” he said.

Bessent stressed that “nothing is agreed until we speak with President Trump”.

The treasury secretary and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were due to brief Trump on Wednesday about the Stockholm discussions, he added.

Bessent also said that, given US secondary tariff legislation on sanctioned Russian oil, China could face high tariffs if Beijing continued with its Russian oil purchases. 

Similarly, the US recently announced an unspecified penalty for India’s purchase of Russian oil, on top of a 25 percent tariff on Indian exports.

What are the central issues in the trade talks?

Technology exports, specifically chips used for artificial intelligence, are understood to have been at the centre of this week’s talks. In particular, US security officials have raised concerns that high-tech American semiconductor chips could be used by China’s military.

In April, Trump was poised to block the export of Nvidia’s H20 chip, which has been designed to comply with Biden-era export curbs. But Trump reversed course following direct appeals from Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang.

In the run-up to this week’s talks, the UK’s Financial Times newspaper reported that Washington had frozen restrictions on technology sales to China to ease negotiations and to avoid retaliation from Beijing in the form of export restrictions on rare earth minerals, as happened in May.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to numerous manufacturing industries, from auto parts to clean energy technology to military hardware. They are also a central issue for trade talks.

China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals, as well as the production of related components, like rare earth magnets.

China’s hold over the industry has been a key concern for US trade representatives since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

What was the state of US-China trade before the recent truce?

For years, Trump has criticised Beijing for what he deems to be unfair trade practices – namely, import quotas, government subsidies and tax breaks. He has even argued that the US’s trade deficit with China, which snowballed to $20 trillion between 1974 and 2024, constitutes a national emergency.

When Trump paused reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries on April 9, he made an exception for China. Beijing, in turn, retaliated with import levies of its own.

Tit-for-tat exchanges quickly snowballed into eye-watering sums. By April 11, US tariffs on Chinese goods had reached 145 percent, while duties on US products entering China had swelled to 125 percent.

Tensions were defused in May, when Bessent and He Lifeng agreed to a truce which slashed respective tariffs by 115 percentage points for three months.

For now, US duties on Chinese products are set at 30 percent while China’s tariffs on the US have dropped to 10 percent.

What will happen next?

This week’s talks may pave the way for a potential meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later in the year, although on Tuesday, Trump denied going out of his way to seek one.

For Thomas Sampson, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, a face-to-face meeting has “the potential to be significant”. Equally though, it could be “a grip-and-grin style summit, where nothing substantive is discussed”, he told Al Jazeera.

Sampson added that US-China negotiations are more complex than those with other Asian countries, owing to China’s grip on rare earth minerals, in addition to the fact that China “has long been a target of Trump’s”.

For now, Sampson said he believes that the “mood around the [Sweden] talks seems more positive than earlier this year. Both sides, it seems, have stepped back from the brink”. His expectation is for a “more restrained trade war” than before, if one is to resume.

On Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said trade talks with China were “moving in the right direction” and that Washington remains in “direct communication” with Beijing.

What other trade deals has Trump concluded in recent weeks?

On top of Trump’s Thursday tariff blitz, the latest US-China talks come after Washington struck deals with both the EU and Japan last week.

Last Sunday, Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade agreement, ending a months-long standoff between two economic giants.

The EU accepted a 15 percent tariff on most of its exports, while the bloc’s average tariff rate on US goods will drop below 1 percent once the deal goes into effect.

Brussels also said it would purchase $750bn in American energy products and invest $600bn more into the US, on top of existing commercial agreements.

France’s Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said the EU had capitulated to Trump’s trade threats, labelling the deal struck on Sunday as a “dark day” for the EU.

Elsewhere, the US has also struck tariff deals with South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Official says ‘contingency plan had flaws’ as torrential rains, floods kill 31 people at senior centre near Beijing.

Torrential rains and flooding across northern China have killed dozens of people, authorities say, including more than 30 elderly residents who were trapped at a care facility in a suburb of the capital Beijing.

Officials said on Thursday that 31 people died at the Taishitun Town Elderly Care Center in the Miyun district, about a 90-minute drive from central Beijing, which was one of the areas hit hardest by this week’s storms.

“For a long time, this senior centre was in the town’s centre and was safe, and such was not included in the preparedness plans,” said Yu Weiguo, the Communist Party secretary for Miyun, expressing his condolences and adding it was a “bitter lesson”.

“This showed that our contingency plan had flaws, and our understanding of extreme weather was inadequate,” Yu said.

The care centre housed 69 residents, including 55 who were disabled in some capacity. The facility sat on low-lying ground near a river that had flooded after the unusually intense rains, local media outlet Caixin reported.

Torrential rains began a week ago and peaked around Beijing and its surrounding provinces on Monday.

In the space of a few days, the hilly Miyun district in the northeast of the capital saw rainfall of up to 573.5mm (22.6 inches). By comparison, the average annual precipitation in Beijing is around 600mm (23.6 inches).

The Miyun Reservoir, the largest in northern China, saw record-breaking water levels during the rains.

The Qingshui River, which runs through Taishitun feeding into the reservoir and is normally a small stream, was flowing at 1,500 times its normal volume on Monday morning when the disaster struck, Yu said.

One Beijing resident’s 87-year-old mother managed to get out of the elder care centre in Miyun, Caixin reported.

“She doesn’t know where she got the strength, but she managed to climb onto the windowsill,” the woman’s daughter said, noting her mother’s roommate was unable to escape and drowned.

Hundreds of thousands affected

At a news conference on Thursday, Beijing’s Deputy Mayor Xia Linmao said at least 44 people died over the past week in the city.

In total, more than 300,000 people have been affected by the rain and flooding in the capital, with more than 24,000 homes, 242 bridges and 756km (470 miles) of roads damaged, said Xia, citing preliminary figures.

In neighbouring Hebei province, authorities announced an additional eight deaths on Thursday and 16 deaths total this week.

At least 31 people were missing in Beijing and Hebei province, authorities said.

Meanwhile, in northern Shanxi province, authorities said on Wednesday evening that 10 people were dead after a minibus carrying farm workers washed away in heavy rain.

Four people were still missing as the rescue continued, according to a city government statement three days after the bus disappeared.