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When it comes to wealth, extravagance and notoriety, few compare to Thailand's playboy king, Maha Vajiralongkorn. Known formally as Rama X, the 73-year-old monarch is the wealthiest ruler in the world, with an estimated net worth of £52billion. He has lived an extraordinarily wild, and at times outright bizarre, life that would put even history's most debauched monarchs to shame. But in recent months, the flamboyant royal has all but retreated from public life. Rarely seen since the October death of his mother Sirikit, the once-spirited monarch appears to still be in mourning. In November, just a few weeks after...

Taiwan has told Washington that its proposal to move 40% of the island’s semiconductor supply chain to the U.S. was “impossible,” Taipei’s top tariff trade negotiator said in an interview. Speaking on a local television broadcast Sunday, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun said she had made it clear to Washington that the island’s semiconductor ecosystem, built over decades, could not simply be relocated. Taiwan’s international expansion, including its investments in the U.S., is predicated on the notion that the industry remains’ rooted in Taiwan and continues to expand domestic investments, she said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Mineral gas deposit of 80.70 billion cubic metres has been confirmed at Bhairabi Rural Municipality-1 of Dailekh district. This is confirmed in the final exploration report submitted to the Government of Nepal by the Chinese Company, China Geological Survey. Spokesperson at the Department of Mines and Geology Dharma Raj Khadka stated that the storage data was released after a comprehensive study by the Chinese team. In the preliminary report made public earlier, it was estimated that there could be 1.12 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the area. He said further testing and the final study have proved larger...

Tariffs Fall and Investment SurgesTrade shapes power structures, and when two economies tighten bonds, the ripple spreads far beyond shipping lanes and customs desks. On Feb. 12, 2026, the Trump administration finalized a sweeping trade agreement with Taiwan that cuts tariffs, boosts American exports, and pours hundreds of billions into U.S. industry.Taiwan agreed to eliminate or sharply reduce tariffs on nearly all American goods, as duties on U.S. beef, dairy, and corn were reduced immediately to 0%. Pork belly tariffs fell from 40% to 10%, and ham fell from 32% to 10%. Taiwan also removed non-tariff barriers on motor vehicles,...

The vessel's captain was ordered to stop for an inspection, but failed to comply and fled, Japan's fisheries agency said.Japan seized a Chinese fishing boat and arrested its skipper, authorities said on Friday (Feb 13), an incident that could deepen a spat between the Asian giants. The episode on Thursday off southern Japan came three months after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that Japan would intervene militarily if Beijing sought to take Taiwan by force. "The vessel's captain was ordered to stop for an inspection by a fisheries inspector, but the vessel failed to comply and fled," Japan's fisheries agency...

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

Results mean coalition of recently installed PM has supermajority in lower house of parliament Japan’s conservative governing coalition has dramatically strengthened its grip on power after a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP) was projected to win as many as 328 of the 465 seats in parliament’s lower house, well above the 233 it needed to regain the majority it lost in 2024. With her coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, she now has a supermajority of two-thirds of seats,...

🚨 BREAKING: Japan’s right-wing PM Sanae Takaichi is set to win a LANDSLIDE VICTORY of up to 326 seats in today’s election, per exit polling 233 is a majority WOW! Being anti-mass migration is POPULAR in Japan The whole world needs more leaders like this! 🇺🇸 🇯🇵

China Sets The Price Now GFN – SHANGHAI Trading in a major China-listed silver fund was halted for a full session on January 30 as regulators moved to contain price distortions, while global silver prices fell sharply from record highs amid elevated volatility and tighter derivatives margin requirements. China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange suspended trading for the entire day on January 30 in the UBS SDIC Silver Futures Fund LOF, according to an official fund announcement. The notice stated that trading would be halted from the market open through the close as part of exchange risk-control measures. “该基金将于2026年1月30日开市起停牌至收市。” (“The fund will...

China has executed four leading members of Myanmar-based scam syndicates, a Chinese court said on Monday (Feb 2), the second such announcement in less than a week as Beijing ramps up a crackdown on cross-border telecom fraud. Fraud compounds where scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Cambodia and the lawless borderlands of Myanmar. Initially, largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal billions of dollars from victims around the world.

Internal orders issued by China’s top military authority have met widespread resistance at the grassroots level following the purge of two of the country’s most senior generals, according to multiple sources close to the People’s Liberation Army who spoke to The Epoch Times. After Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and chief of the Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli were placed under investigation on Jan. 24, at least two directives issued by the CMC General Office to theater commands and group armies were ignored or only passively acknowledged. Sources said the grassroots troops within the military are expressing...

Police lashed a woman and her lover 140 times each for having sex outside marriage and drinking alcohol in a far-flung region of Indonesia on Thursday — one of the harshest punishments carried out in 25 years. The brutal beating — with a rattan cane — caused the woman to sob and collapse in the region of Aceh, which is governed by strict Islamic laws. The lovers were caned on their back in a public flogging. It is among the harshest sentences imposed since Sharia law was implemented in Aceh in 2001, the Agence France-Presse reported.

China has suspended imports of Irish beef following the detection of an outbreak of bluetongue in County Wexford last week, while more cases of the virus have been confirmed in three additional cattle herds in the county. Minister for Agriculture said that his department informed Chinese authorities of the cases and that they “subsequently informed us that they have suspended the acceptance of Irish beef exported from Ireland with effect from 27 January 2026”. Minister Heydon added: “As with all temporary suspensions, it is a matter for the importing country when they will recommence the acceptance of exports of Irish...

A female skier was mauled by a snow leopard after getting too close to try to take a photo, with a chilling video capturing her being led away with blood pouring from her face.The footage shows the victim lying prone in the snow wearing a purple ski suit after the animal mauled her on Friday evening in Fuyun County at the northern Chinese border with Mongolia.She is then seen being taken away from the scene with blood pouring from her face.

"We are in the position to form a new government," said a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party, after the vote's third and final phase took place on Sunday.Myanmar's dominant pro-military party has won junta-run elections, a party source told AFP on Monday (Jan 26), after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule. While the military has said the election will return power to the people, popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi remains detained since the coup and her party has been dissolved, while critics say the ballot was stacked...

The Pentagon on Friday night released a long-awaited strategy that prioritizes the U.S. homeland and Western Hemisphere — a stunning reversal from previous administrations that aligns with President Donald Trump’s military strikes in Venezuela and efforts to acquire Greenland. The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China. Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland. The strategy calls for attention to the “practical interests” of the U.S. public and an abandonment of “grandiose...

To get its citizens to have babies, the Chinese Communist Party has pulled every lever. The efforts have largely failed. For the fourth year in a row, China reported more deaths than births in 2025 as its birthrate plunged to a record low, leaving its population smaller and older. The government on Monday said 7.92 million babies were born last year, down from 9.54 million in 2024. The number of people who died in 2025, 11.31 million, continued to climb. The latest population figures were reported alongside economic data that showed China’s economy grew 5 percent in 2025. The number...

Nicholas Kristof has a column today about China's desire to seize Taiwan and what it might actually do to make that happen. The column opens with a scenario in which China goes all in on a military invasion of the island, including some kind of attack on nearby US bases as a way to hinder our response. But Kristof and the people he's spoken with (he's in Taipei at the moment) don't think that's the most likely scenario.The more likely scenario is going to be something like what China did with Hong Kong. Not an invasion, exactly, but a gradual...

FOR SEVEN decades Tokyo was considered the world’s most populous city. That was 15 years too long, according to data released last month by the UN. Until recently the organisation’s statisticians accepted national governments’ definitions of where their cities began and ended; their latest report accepts the reality of urban sprawl. By their new measures, Jakarta (pictured), Indonesia’s capital, jumps to the top of the board with 42m people, about as many as Canada. Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, with 37m, has also pulled ahead of Tokyo, with 33m. Delhi and Shanghai, with around 30m people each, fill out the top...

The U.S. shouldn’t ignore this small Asian nation, because it offers interesting options for addressing some American concerns. Myanmar, also called Burma, is holding its first election since a military coup in February 2021. Expectations are low, and the vote has already been denounced as a sham. Early reports suggest that the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party won 82 of the 102 townships that voted in the first phase of the election on December 28. The nation has a total of 330 townships. Myanmar has reserves of natural gas as well as rare earth mines. The country’s pariah status...