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$10bn Trump-approved sale to Taipei triggers Beijing sanctions against firms such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman
China’s foreign ministry has hit US defence companies including Boeing with sanctions after Donald Trump approved a large package of arms sales to Taiwan.
The ministry said on Friday that the measures – against 10 individuals and 20 US firms including Boeing’s production hub at St Louis in Missouri – would freeze any assets the companies and individuals hold in China and bar domestic organisations and individuals from doing business with them.

Japanese strike-back capabilities and coastal defences to be boosted while Beijing accuses Tokyo of fuelling a ‘space arms race’
Japan’s cabinet has approved a record high defence budget as tensions with China continue to spiral, with Beijing this week accusing Tokyo of “fuelling a space arms race”.
The draft defence budget for the next fiscal year – approved on Friday – is more than ¥9tn ($58bn) and 9.4% bigger than the previous budget, which will end in April. The increase comes in the fourth year of Japan’s five-year program to double its annual arms spending to 2% of GDP.

She was given the “hardest job under heaven”: upholding birth limits enforced by often brutal local officials. She came to support softening the policy, then abolishing it.

Elections will be first since military seized power in 2021, but analysts say vote is far from a step toward democracy
Myanmar is preparing to go to the polls for the first time since its military seized power in a coup in 2021, but with its former leader behind bars, its most successful political party disbanded and roughly a third of the country either disputed or in rebel hands, few believe claims by its military rulers that its 28 December election will be “free and fair”.
“This is not for the people, this is for themselves,” says Pai, 25, who fled Myanmar after the military seized power. “They [the ruling junta] are looking for a way out of the trap they are [in].”

A video of a child crying over her broken A.I. chatbot stirred up conversation in China, with some viewers questioning whether the gadgets are good for children. But the girl’s father says it’s more than a toy; it’s a family member.

From the Indigenous doctor balancing traditional and western medicine to a father risking death to provide for his family in Gaza, these are some of the people whose determination and bravery stood out
In 2012, Adana Omágua Kambeba travelled 4,000km (2,500 miles) from her home in Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon, to take up a coveted place to study medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in south-east Brazil. She became , the Kambeba, or Omágua, to graduate in the field, still largely dominated by white elites. According to the of those who graduated in medicine in Brazil.
Adana Kambeba uses the ancestral knowledge of her people alongside conventional medicine in her work. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/the Guardian

The Christmas Chinese dinner is one of the truly great and unique nights of the American Jewish year. Jewish families patronize the same restaurant every year with the dedication generally reserved ...

In 2025, Asians and Asian Americans reached historic milestones across politics, science, technology, and global culture.

The country’s production of nuclear warheads has slowed, but its missiles may be poised to strike back fast in case of an attack, an annual assessment found.

Video shows Gen Xu Qinxian explaining why he refused to deploy troops to crush 1989 student-led demonstrations
Rare footage of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general who defied orders to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square and crush the has been leaked online, offering a highly unusual glimpse into the upper echelons of the military at one of the most fraught moments in modern Chinese history.
General Xu Qinxian’s refusal to take his troops from the PLA’s prestigious 38th Group Army, a unit based on the outskirts of Beijing, into the capital has been the stuff of Tiananmen lore for decades.

In his work, he often returned to Manzanar, the camp in which he and his family, along with thousands of other people of Japanese descent, were interned during World War II.

Beijing’s push to dominate technology through state-backed industrial policy is reshaping global trade and could devastate European industry
Emmanuel Macron came back from China in early December empty-handed. The French president’s appeal to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to help stop the war in Ukraine was never going to gain traction given Beijing’s unqualified support for Russia.
Urging Xi to address China’s surging trade surplus, the result of the country’s economic and industrial policies, predictably also fell on closed ears.