Nguyễn Phú Trọng (阮富仲) has been elected the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), during the 13th National Party Congress being held in Hanoi. It will be his third term as the country’s most powerful political figure. …

If you are a WhatsApp user in Hong Kong, you might find that your instant-messaging application is somehow quiet these days. On 4 January, WhatsApp updated its terms and privacy policy to enable sharing user data with Facebook Inc, its parent company. Users will lose access to WhatsApp if…

Yesterday, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca was approved for use in the UK’s vaccination programme. Today, China’s State Food and Drug Administration also gave conditional approval to a vaccine developed by Sinopharm. By the end of 2020, national regulatory authorities have approved six vaccines…

Early this month, Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA systems analyst who exposed the US spy programme, asked Donald Trump to pardon Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: It has been more than 7 years since Snowden fled to Moscow. In October he was granted permanent residency in Russia, and now, with his wife…

Last week, president-elect Joe Biden announced the nomination of Antony Blinken to the position of secretary of state. Tony served as deputy secretary of state (2015 to 2017) and deputy national security adviser (2013 to 2015) during the Obama administration. For the position of defense secretary, Biden has yet to…

In recent weeks, if you are a WhatsApp user in Hong Kong, you might receive the following message from friend: Hello Sorry, I sent you a 6-digit SMS code by SMS by mistake. Can you pass it on to me? It is urgent At the same time, a SMS message…

It was reported by FT that the US has blocked Hong Kong residents from accessing at least two federal government websites that provide economic data. The websites of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes economic information including monthly jobs and unemployment figures, and the US Census Bureau, which releases…

There is a president who dubbed himself Tariff Man, but doesn’t want to pay taxes. There is a startup which provides fraud prevention software, but falsifies its sales figures to defraud investors. On 10 September, Las Vegas-based NS8 informed its employees that hundreds of them were laid off immediately. …

With the passage of time, some change and some do not. This photo of Beijing skyline goes viral in WeChat groups. It was taken by Tom van Dillen, a Dutch consultant living in Beijing, and was first posted on his Twitter on 9 September. The old bricks on both sides…