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While hailing Zhu’s legacy, authorities are wary that the nostalgia could lead to criticisms of Xi’s rule.

Commentary about the ‘so bad it’s good’ qualities of mother and son’s movie has driven people to see it at cinema
A crude, low-tech animation about a cow and a skylark has become a sleeper hit at China’s box office, sitting alongside blockbusters such as The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day in cinema revenue rankings.
Niu Lai, which translates to The Cow is Coming, is an 86-minute budget animation about a newborn calf and a skylark whose relationship develops over the course of an abstract dream sequence.

Industrial output and retail sales slump in July after one of the country’s weakest quarterly growth rates ever
China’s economy is showing signs of extending a slowdown with a slump in industrial output and retail sales in July, adding to pressure on Beijing to intervene with measures to support activity.
After the world’s second largest economy posted one of its in the three months to June, the latest figures suggest it continued to falter in July.

China is exporting more than A.I. models. It wants its data to influence the world’s chatbots, raising fears that Beijing’s narratives will spread with the technology.

Niu Lai's confusing plot and laughable animation quality has won ironic fans on the internet.

In a social media post, the president scolded South Korea for not helping denuclearize Iran, and also praised North Korea and its leader.

China has established the first scheduled transit through the northern sea route, but questions remain over the environmental and political risks
When Marco Rubio suggested that the world should look to new shipping lanes to bypass the logjammed strait of Hormuz, it’s unlikely he had the Arctic’s northern sea route in mind.
And yet in recent months the promise of this 5,500km channel – cleaved through frozen seas by nuclear-powered icebreakers and illuminated by a sun that never dips below the Arctic horizon – has grown.

Asian allies are beginning to wonder whether the United States would or could defend them in a war.

Exclusive: Fake consultancy impersonating Brisbane firm online is one of 13 websites seized by the US Department of Justice

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When the first emails arrived, they were easily dismissed as spam. But as strangers continued to boast about their defence and security credentials, they became impossible to ignore.
From mid-2025, a small Australian consultancy firm called Horizzen started receiving emails and strange calls from people applying for vague jobs in the United States.

As part of its expansionist approach to the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration is trying to reassert its dominance, one U.S. visa at a time.

Boats carrying hundreds of people are a clear and alarming trend. But where do such large vessels come from?
Providing a large dinghy for use in the choppy seas of western Europe was not a problem, as long as the order was for more than 20 vessels, they said. The sales manager at the Chinese company even had an online brochure for an undercover Guardian reporter, posing as a prospective client, to peruse.
They had a production capacity of 500 boats a month and, yes, it was possible to get even bigger ones for the right price. They could do a seven or even an eight-metre military-style dinghy for $1,678 (£1,238) a boat, without the engines, but that would be lacking CE certification, the mandatory mark that shows a product meets EU health and safety requirements.
Additional reporting by Lyndon Li

Despite the recent hearings in Congress, we seem to be even further from the goal of understanding Covid-19’s origin’s than we have ever been
As a microbiologist and infectious disease clinician, it has been tough to watch the recent devolution of public discourse on Covid-19 origins. It has been especially difficult for me to read the comments of about the origins debate in his . And it has been painful to watch the televised spectacle hosted by the US senator Rand Paul on 29 July involving a hostile interrogation of Fauci.
Despite many early pleas, including , for a dispassionate, objective assessment of what we know, don’t know and need to know about Covid-19 origins, we seem to be even further from this goal now than we have ever been – plagued by politicization, polarization and illogical thinking.
David Relman is a professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford University. He was an inaugural member of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America