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Records show ex-president of country’s lower house helped arrange for retail centre owner to join official parliamentary trip to mainland

A high-ranking Chilean lawmaker is facing renewed scrutiny after records showed she helped arrange for a Chinese businessman to join an official parliamentary trip to China, where he coordinated logistics and took part in meetings with mainland authorities.

Messages revealed by investigators on Thursday showed Karol Cariola, a member of Chile’s Communist Party and former president of the country’s Chamber of Deputies, may have used her position to benefit a Chinese national on several occasions.

Prosecutors are now examining whether her actions amount to influence peddling, an allegation she denies. No formal charges have been filed.

The businessman, Bo Yang, does not hold public office.

But messages obtained by prosecutors and revealed by local media on Thursday showed that during a July 2024 trip to Beijing, he issued instructions to lawmakers, organised schedules and meals, and was present at formal events alongside Chinese officials.

Investigators say Yang was included in the delegation at Cariola’s request.

President also says he declined Tehran’s call for him to urge Israel to stop its air strikes, calling request ‘very hard to make’

Asked by a reporter whether the US could launch a strike before the two-week deadline, Trump on Friday replied: “I would say two weeks would be the maximum.”

“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do that than if somebody is losing,” Trump said, referring to Israel’s battlefield advantage.

“But we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he added. “We’ll see what happens.”

The International Organisation for Mediation may be a sign of Beijing’s hopes to reshape the global order with help from the Global South

China is seeking to become the chief architect of new models of global governance in the wake of the rapid retreat of the US from the international stage under Donald Trump, with Beijing saying the existing mechanisms do not properly represent the interests of developing nations.

Placing the organisation in Hong Kong also sent a message to the world that the city is moving beyond its traditional image as a gateway to the mainland’s economy and can play an increasingly political role as China’s bridge to the Global South.

“Let’s improve the participation of developing countries … and strengthen the representation and voice of the Global South in international governance,” Wang said during his speech at the signing ceremony.

He added that the body was “intended to fill a gap in the existing international mediation mechanisms and serve as an important rule-of-law public good for improving global governance”.

“Building IOMed is an important effort by China to participate in global governance and to expand multilateral mechanisms in action,” said Zhu Feng, the executive dean of Nanjing University’s school of international studies.

The tech giant did not give a public launch date for the latest version of the operating system, but said it will be more intelligent and open

The company introduced a beta version of HarmonyOS 6 at its annual developer conference on Friday, highlighting new features such as AI agents. Richard Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said the update was now available to developers, but did not specify a launch date for consumers.

Huawei has installed HarmonyOS 5 on more than 40 device models, with over 8 million developers registered in its ecosystem and more than 30,000 apps and “atomic services” – mini programs that run without installation – now available, according to Yu.

“But the top 5,000 apps accounted for 99.9 per cent of consumer time spent” on Huawei devices, he said.

The company also announced the HarmonyOS Agent Framework, a toolkit that will allow developers to create AI agents – programs that can perform tasks on behalf of users – without the need to build or train foundation models.

Punitive tariffs and severe aid cuts are shaking the foundations of the US relationship with Asean, deepening a sense of ‘unreliability’

This volatility has deepened a sense of American “unreliability” across Southeast Asia, according to experts who spoke to This Week in Asia.

“There’s no reason to sugar-coat it,” Hegseth said. “The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent.”

Hegseth called on US allies and partners to share more of the defence burden, stressing that such cooperation would enable Washington to allocate more resources to the Indo-Pacific, describing it as “our priority theatre”.

Tzuyang reportedly consumes around 30,000 calories per day, an intake that is 15 times higher than the average for adult women

A woman in South Korea, affectionately dubbed the “Big Stomach Queen”, is known for her enormous appetite, despite weighing only 50kg.

Doctors have revealed that her stomach is 40 per cent larger than the average size for someone of her stature, and even exceeds that of many adult men.

Park Jung-won, 28, widely recognised online as Tzuyang, boasts over 12 million followers on social media and has even opened her own restaurant.

Tzuyang is celebrated not only for her idol-like beauty and slender figure but also for her astonishing capacity for food.

For context, she once ate 10 bowls of ramen in one sitting, and on two other occasions, she finished 101 plates of sushi and 33 servings of beef intestines in a single sitting.

In one notable challenge, she polished off 10 cups of super spicy chicken ramen in under seven minutes.

Analyst says US threats to trading partners are a sign of desperation that should embolden Chinese negotiators

The United States failed this week to reach a tariff deal with Japan, a key Pacific Rim ally, and has threatened to notify multiple countries of new duty rates on imports after talks with only one, the United Kingdom, have shown any results.

Those developments, which made the US look weak in the short term, should prompt China to take a harder line with Washington on reaching a deal, analysts said.

Country-specific “Liberation Day” tariffs were put on hold for 90 days the following week – until July 9 for most countries – pending trade negotiations. Following talks in Switzerland in early May, those on China were also paused for 90 days, until August 12.

Beijing’s negotiators would draw strength from the US threat to notify trading partners of new duties and the lack of a US-Japan deal because both showed it was hard for Washington to get what it wanted through talks this summer, said Chen Zhiwu, chair professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong.

“These kinds of threats should embolden the Chinese negotiators because it’s a sign of desperation,” Chen said.

HKMAO director says those with ill intentions are still plotting various actions in the form of ‘soft resistance’ and smearing security law

Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong affairs addressed a national security law forum on Saturday as part of his third inspection visit to the city to assess its progress on multiple fronts.

Xia Baolong’s attendance at the forum, held to mark the fifth anniversary of the Beijing-imposed legislation, was a focus of the official’s five-day visit.

The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) director used the event to share his latest assessment of national security threats in the city, and issue directions for the city’s development.

Reporting by Jeffie Lam, Jess Ma and Willa Wu.

Recent viral videos showing young people and elderly clashing over seats have raised fears of deteriorating public morality in China

Elderly man taunts woman while demanding seat in train

This long-standing cultural ideal has helped shape familial relationships and defined broader societal norms. Needless to say, there are numerous examples of preserving filial piety. Yet in today’s fast-paced and increasingly individualistic society, these values are too often forgotten or neglected.

Two recent videos have gone viral on Chinese social media and reignited public debate about the possible erosion of moral values in China. In the first video, an elderly woman asked a young woman to vacate a courtesy seat on a subway. Rather than showing empathy or understanding, several nearby young passengers criticised the elderly woman, claiming she should avoid public transport during rush hour altogether because young people need to have a seat to rest after a day’s hard work.

The situation became even more distressing when the young woman refused to move. This prompted the elderly woman to attempt to sit on the young woman before the latter pushed her away.

In the second incident, an 83-year-old man leaning on a cane asked a young man to give up his seat on a crowded train. The young man refused. In a moment of exasperation, the elderly man reached out and pulled at the youth’s arm, leading to a verbal confrontation. Their argument quickly escalated, drawing the attention of other passengers and raising questions about boundaries, entitlement and basic decency.

In response to this incident, staff at the subway authority in Shanghai offered little in the way of guidance on how such situations could be avoided in the future.