British paratroopers landed on a “golf course covered in rocks” to supply medical personnel and oxygen to Britain’s most remote overseas territory as it deals with a suspected hantavirus case, an army commander said on Sunday. The UK Health Security Agency confirmed on Friday that a British national had disembarked from the cruise ship MV Hondius to the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, where they live, with a suspected case of hantavirus. Six paratroopers, a Royal Air Force (RAF)...

We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Could omega-3 supplements hurt the brain? Chinese military study flags risks 2. Hong Kong schools record net student rise for 2 years straight 3. Trump heads to China weakened as Xi gains leverage ahead of summit 4. ‘Foreigner won’: Filipinos divided over pageant winner’s US roots 5. Singapore...

You can’t buy happiness, they say. But we “buy” dopamine fixes all the time. Just whip out the smartphone and we easily go down that rabbit hole of endless doom scrolling, falling into the addictive trap of instant gratification, chasing likes, shares, comments and followers as rewards. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in our experience of pleasure, focus, reward and motivation. It propels us to put in effort, devote time and feel good about our achievements. Before the...

Israel’s next election campaign is well under way, with political defections, fractious coalition-building and naked appeals to ethnic exclusion marking its opening salvoes as a crowded field of challengers queues up to try Benjamin Netanyahu for the security catastrophe of October 7, 2023 and the wars that followed. The vote, constitutionally set for this October, is shaping up as a referendum on the prime minister’s central claim to power: that only he can keep Israel safe. But after two and a...

Nobel Peace laureate and activist Narges Mohammadi has been transferred to a Tehran hospital more than a week after collapsing in prison, her foundation said on Sunday. Her transfer comes after days of pleading by her family and others who described her condition as critical. Her foundation said she has been granted a prison sentence suspension on bail. It was not clear for how long her sentence is suspended, the foundation said. Mohammadi had been imprisoned since December in Zanjan prison. She...

On April 28, the United Arab Emirates informed the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) it was leaving. Three days’ notice. No call to Riyadh beforehand, apparently. The grievance about production quotas was years old: Abu Dhabi had threatened to quit in 2021. What’s changed has nothing to do with the barrel count. It is about who underwrites Abu Dhabi’s security when it acts on a decision Riyadh opposes. After Iran struck UAE infrastructure, Abu Dhabi sent only a foreign...

Iran sent its response to the latest US proposal to end the Iran war via Pakistani mediators on Sunday, but US President Donald Trump quickly rejected it in a social media post as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” – the latest setback to efforts to resolve the stand-off in the Persian Gulf that has throttled shipping and sent energy prices soaring. Iranian state television reported that Tehran rejected the US proposal as amounting to surrender, insisting instead on “war reparations by the US, full Iranian...

Russia and Ukraine swapped accusations of breaking a US-brokered ceasefire on Sunday, with both sides claiming to have suffered casualties in drone and artillery strikes over the past 24 hours. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia was neither observing the truce nor “even particularly trying to”, adding there had been no calm in front-line areas despite a lull in large-scale attacks and pledged that Ukraine would retaliate for any aggression shown by Moscow. “Yesterday and...

One of five French people flown back to France on Sunday from the cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak is showing symptoms of the illness, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said. “On of them showed symptoms in the repatriation plane,” he posted on social media. “These five passengers have immediately been placed in strict isolation until further notice. “They are getting medical treatment and will have tests and a medical check-up,” he added. Lecornu also said he would issue...

Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium must be “taken out” before the US-Israeli war against Iran can be considered over, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told an American broadcaster Sunday. “It’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material – enriched uranium – that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” Netanyahu said in an interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes. “You go in and you take it out,” the Israeli leader said when asked how the...

When US President Donald Trump announced that 5,000 US troops would leave Germany, the immediate reading in Western capitals was political: another round in Trump’s running quarrel with European allies, triggered by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism of Washington’s handling of the war with Iran. For Beijing, the more interesting reading is structural. The drawdown coincides with a period in which Foreign Minister Wang Yi has spent much of 2026 cultivating a “partners not rivals”...

Israel deported two activists on Sunday after being detained near Greece for slightly over a week for leading an aid flotilla attempting to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The two, Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian citizen Thiago Ávila, were among dozens of activists intercepted by the Israeli navy off the coast of Crete. Both are members of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s steering committee, whose mission is to break Israel’s naval...