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5 killed in Brazil, as fierce winds bring chaos to Rio, Sao Paulo region

Gusts of up to 100km/h cut power, fell dozens of trees and brought public transport to a halt, stranding thousands of people Five people have died after powerful gusts of wind in Brazil brought chaos to Rio de Janeiro and parts of Sao Paulo state, cutting power and bringing public transport to a standstill. Residents of Rio de Janeiro were taken by surprise when winds of up to 100km/h hit just before rush hour, felling dozens of trees and leaving thousands stranded as the city’s three subway queues ground to a halt. The fire department said in a statement that two people had died when a wall collapsed in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and a fisherman was missing in the coastal town of Tarituba. In Santos, in the state of Sao Paulo, wind gusts of up to 111km/h caused widespread damage, and a homeless person was killed by a fallen tree, local authorities said in a statement. Operations were affected at several major airports in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Santos Dumont Airport, Rio’s downtown airport serving mostly domestic flights, said in a statement that it had suspended operations for about two hours.

July 29, 2026

Business

HKMA keeps base rate at 4% as US market slumps, fears the Fed is losing inflation fight

Shortly after the US Federal Reserve’s decision to maintain its benchmark rate, Hong Kong’s monetary authority follows suit The US stock market slumped on Wednesday with the Dow Jones down 1,152 points or 2.2 per cent, while the S&P 500 fell 1.5 per cent and Nasdaq dropped 1.7 per cent. The decline came after the bond market signalled the Federal Reserve could be failing behind on its inflation fight. “For some households, businesses ⁠and market ‌professionals, five years of high inflation have ⁠left a mistaken impression that is hard to shake – that the Fed’s implicit inflation target was somehow above 2 per cent,” Fed chairman Kevin Warsh said in a media briefing after hosting his second FOMC meeting. “Let me reiterate: there is no soft inflation target. There ⁠is no soft implicit target, not on this committee’s watch. There’s only a target, and it’s 2 per cent.” The Fed’s decision was widely expected, with 67.9 per cent of traders forecasting no change, while the rest expected a 25 basis point rate rise, according to CME FedWatch data based on Fed funds futures contracts on Wednesday. ⁠“No hike at this moment is slightly positive for Hong Kong’s real estate and stock market,” said Tommy Ong, the managing director of T.O.

July 29, 2026

Business

‘She killed the kids!’ Police call from Lindsay Clancy’s husband brings tears to courtroom

The ex-US nurse is accused of strangling her three children, in a murder trial that has centred on her mental state after childbirth Lindsay Clancy sobbed in court on Wednesday as jurors listened to the anguished emergency call her then-husband made after returning from an errand to find she had strangled their three children in their Massachusetts home. On the roughly seven-minute recording, Patrick Clancy can be heard speaking with his wife upon finding her badly injured and bleeding in their yard, after she jumped from the home’s second-storey window. He then tells the dispatcher he is going to check on the children. Moments later, he howls and cries after finding them in the basement. The confused dispatcher repeatedly asks what happened. Three years after their deaths, the murder trial has centred on Lindsay Clancy’s mental state at the time. Her lawyers will seek to prove she had post-pregnancy psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

July 29, 2026

Business

How Trump’s call for Asia-Pacific allies to raise defence spending may backfire on US

The president hopes his demands will benefit the US defence industry but analysts believe local arms makers may be the main beneficiaries Donald Trump’s demands that American allies in the Asia-Pacific region share more of the defensive burden have renewed questions about how far they can rely on the United States to help deter the likes of China and North Korea. Such concerns have led to an increasing focus on developing their own defence industries – but analysts have said that may eventually weaken American dominance in the global arms trade. The chain stands between mainland China and the Pacific and has been identified as a strategic barrier that could be used to block access to the open waters. Its significance is heightened by the fact that Taiwan sits at its heart. Beijing regards the island as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.

July 29, 2026

Business

Trump unveils US$22 billion plan to remake Washington Dulles airport

The revamp is the latest in a series of major projects the president has launched in and around the US capital US President Donald Trump unveiled a US$22 billion plan on Wednesday to rebuild Washington Dulles airport by replacing concourses and adding a large parking garage while preserving the landmark main terminal. The announcement is the latest in a series of major projects he has announced in and around the US capital. “It’s considered one of the ‌worst airports anywhere in the world, we’re going to make it maybe the best with some hard work,” Trump said, arguing it was time “for a major and long overdue renovation and reconstruction of Washington’s really horribly-thought-of Dulles”. Trump, who was joined by United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at the White House, has been pushing for an overhaul of the airport that is the main international gateway for the national capital region. The plan includes 5 million square feet of new ⁠or renovated airport space. Duffy in May confirmed the federal government planned a US$22 billion overhaul of Dulles.

July 29, 2026

Business

UK’s PM Burnham vows to fix Britain’s ‘unfair’ adult care system

Burnham did not rule out tax rises to fund a new scheme as part of efforts to overhaul Britain’s social care system British Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged on Wednesday to take difficult decisions to overhaul England’s adult social care system, saying he wanted to work with other parties to end unfair high costs for users that he likened to US healthcare. Successive governments have failed to reform adult social care, for which families can pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, after previous proposals were defeated by opposition parties ‌who dubbed them a “dementia tax” or “death tax”. Burnham did not rule out tax rises to fund a new scheme and said that “scare stories” from newspaper headlines would not deter him from tackling a situation that will only get worse as the population ages. “It’s a major dereliction of public duty that parliament has not faced up to this,” he told an audience at a care home in north London. Asked if he could transform social care without raising taxes, he said that more was possible within existing resources, but some of the plans “will require difficult decisions”.

July 29, 2026

Business

Xi’s odyssey through Western confusion

Support us Image: Appia Institute The Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Congress scheduled for autumn 2027 could be one of the most delicate and significant in its history. President Xi Jinping will extend his power for a fourth five-year term and bring up an entire generation of younger cadres. They will be people born in the 1960s, roughly ten years younger than him, who will join the Standing Committee (five to seven people) or the Politburo (21-25 people). In the three previous Congresses, Xi, who was born in 1953 and rose to power in 2012, had to navigate among officials his own age or older. He succeeded with clearly brilliant results. A Politburo composed of younger people who owe everything to him will further increase his clout in the country. He has over a year to prepare, with no challengers on the horizon. He has completed an unprecedented purge of the military without any pushback from any party organization. The CPC was practically born out of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and the military had always been the political kingmaker. By zeroing out the PLA’s political power, Xi has concentrated a degree of authority that none of his predecessors, including Mao Zedong, ever had.

July 29, 2026

Business

Drills to start as Hong Kong targets September launch of revamped border crossing

Secretary for Security Chris Tang and other officials set to inspect the Huanggang Port checkpoint on Friday Hong Kong is gearing up for a September launch of its revamped Huanggang Port border crossing, with drills set to begin next month under the new “joint inspection” model, the South China Morning Post has learned. Sources said Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung and other officials were set to inspect the checkpoint on Friday, when Hong Kong will begin exercising jurisdiction over its designated area of the crossing. “Unlike other previous checkpoint openings where the responsible departments only needed to do internal tests, the revamped checkpoint will require drills to test its operations,” a source said. Hong Kong’s legislature earlier this month passed a bill that provided the legal basis for a “co-location” arrangement with Shenzhen authorities in the same building. The bill cleared all stages in three days after being gazetted, marking the fastest round of scrutiny since the Legislative Council’s overhaul in 2021 under the “patriots administering Hong Kong” principle. This source said officers from relevant departments would begin moving into the building from Friday to continue preparatory work inside.

July 29, 2026

Business

Is China’s biotech boom at risk? Fear of policy backlash after death in gene-editing trial

Scientist says child’s death reveals ‘serious failures in risk assessment, transparency and institutional oversight’ “I hope this tragedy does not have a lasting negative impact on China’s investigator-initiated clinical-research system, but there is a real risk of a regulatory backlash,” said Wang Haoran, chief executive of Neoland Biosciences, based in Shandong province. “China has advanced rapidly in several frontier areas, partly because the mechanism has provided greater flexibility for carefully supervised early clinical exploration. That speed has increased the sense of urgency across the biotechnology industries in the United States and Europe. “This case appears to reveal serious failures in risk assessment, transparency and institutional oversight. Stronger safeguards are clearly necessary, especially for first-in-human gene-editing treatments involving children.” The girl, identified only as Mei, died days after receiving a bespoke therapy designed to correct a neurodevelopmental genetic mutation in March last year, according to a joint investigation by Retraction Watch and the journal Science published on July 23.

July 29, 2026

Business

India seeks new anti-AI deepfake law to counter ‘weapons of mass distortion’

Fake videos targeting a top military officer and rising online fraud cases have raised fears of deepfakes sowing ‘panic and confusion’ The cases have deepened concerns over the potential for misinformation to sow discord in India during a geopolitical crisis, such as in the war against Pakistan last year. The proposal aims to close a gap in India’s laws by clearly defining punishments concerning deepfakes and other related offences. The changes would also cover “digital arrest” or impersonation scams, in which criminals pose as police, central bank or government officials and pressure victims via video calls into transferring money or face alleged legal action. Those who are convicted could have their assets or bank accounts frozen, according to local media reports. Under current Indian laws, online platforms are required to label deepfakes as artificial intelligence-generated and allow tracking of such content. They have to remove deepfakes within three hours of a government or court order and manipulated intimate images within two hours.

July 29, 2026

Business

Hong Kong raises alert on AI voices as 150 WhatsApp hijackings lead to HK$26m losses

Police say one victim was scammed out of HK$10 million by fraudsters impersonating his father Hong Kong police have recorded 150 WhatsApp account hijacking cases in the past two weeks, with total losses exceeding HK$26 million (US$3.31 million), including one in which a victim was scammed out of HK$10 million by fraudsters impersonating his father. In a social media post on Wednesday, the force’s Cyberdefender platform warned residents against “blindly” trusting voice messages as fraudsters were using artificial intelligence (AI) to imitate loved ones after compromising their accounts. “In WhatsApp account hijackings, scammers may use AI to fake the voices of people close to you,” the post said. Once they gain access to an account, they message the victim’s contacts to solicit money or extract personal information. Cyberdefender, which is operated by the force’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau, cited a recent example in which a son believed he received a WhatsApp message from his father, even though the account had already been taken over by scammers. The scammers first sent a voice message to the victim claiming they urgently needed to transfer HK$1 million to a friend.

July 29, 2026

Business

Famed French DJ Kavinsky found dead in Paris

It was not immediately clear how he died, but emergency crews on Tuesday noted nothing suspicious French DJ and musician Kavinsky, known for his electronic classic “Nightcall”, has been found dead at his home in Paris, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The self-taught pianist, whose real name is Vincent Belorgey, would have turned 51 on Friday. It was not immediately clear how he died, but emergency crews late on Tuesday noted nothing suspicious, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. “Nightcall” became a global hit after hit was featured in the soundtrack of 2011 movie Drive starring Ryan Gosling. It was later covered by the English indie pop band London Grammar. After Kavinsky performed it at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, it became the most sought-after tune ever in a single day on the Shazam app.

July 29, 2026