World

A dual US and German citizen has been arrested on charges that he travelled to Israel and attempted to firebomb the branch office of the US embassy in Tel Aviv, officials said on Sunday.Federal prosecutors in New York said the man, Joseph Neumeyer, walked up to the embassy building on May 19 with a backpack containing Molotov cocktails but got into a confrontation with a guard and eventually ran away, dropping his backpack as the guard tried to grab him.Police then tracked Neumeyer down to a hotel near the embassy and arrested him, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York.Neumeyer, 28, who is originally from Colorado, had travelled from the US to Canada in early February and then arrived in Israel in late April, according to court records. He had made a s...

Americans on Sunday marked five years since George Floyd was killed by a US police officer, as US President Donald Trump backtracks on reforms designed to tackle racism.Floyd’s deadly arrest on May 25, 2020 helped launch the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement into a powerful force that sought to resolve America’s deeply rooted racial issues, from police violence to systemic inequality.But since Trump’s return to power in January – he was serving his first term when Floyd died – his administration has axed civil rights investigations and cracked down on diversity hiring initiatives.Some Democratic politicians, as well as United Nations rights chief Volker Turk, commemorated the anniversary on Sunday.“As anti-racism, inclusion efforts & law enforcement reforms face serious setbacks, we mu...

The suspect in the recent knife attack at Hamburg’s central train station was released from a psychiatric hospital on the day before the stabbing, officials said on Sunday.The 39-year-old woman had been treated in a psychiatric institution in the northern German city of Cuxhaven for three weeks after she was found in a state of helplessness in early May, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in the state of Lower Saxony said.She has admitted to the act in front of a magistrate, a spokeswoman for prosecutors said on Sunday.The suspects, who comes from the northern state of Lower Saxony, has been known to police since 2021, a spokesman for the state Interior Ministry said.“She appeared at police stations several times, showing clear signs of mental illness,” the spokesman said.

Six people died in Switzerland over the weekend in accidents in the Alps, officials said Sunday.Near the luxury resort of Zermatt, rescuers found the bodies of five people, police said in a statement.A helicopter was sent to survey the area around the Rimpfischhorn mountain after climbers alerted authorities after spotting abandoned skis near the summit on Saturday.“The bodies of five people were quickly found,” Swiss police said in a statement.Authorities have opened an investigation into the incident and were working to identify the victims, it said.The Rimpfischhorn is a 4,199-metre (13,776-ft) mountain that lies east of Zermatt, near the Italian border, and is popular with backcountry skiers.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he hoped to strike deals for France in areas such as defence, energy and tech innovation, as he arrived in Vietnam for the start of a roughly week-long trip in Asia.Macron arrived in Hanoi on Sunday, marking the first trip to Vietnam by a French president in nearly a decade.After Vietnam, Macron will then go to Indonesia and finish up in Singapore, where he will speak at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s top defence conference.Macron’s visit comes as France and the European Union aim to strengthen their commercial ties in Asia to offset uncertainty over US President Donald Trump’s tariff measures.“I am coming here to strengthen our ties in key areas – defence, innovation, the energy transition, and cultural exchanges,” wrote Macron ...

Britain’s King Charles III will travel to Canada in the coming days for a brief but “impactful” visit, at a time when President Donald Trump is floating the idea of making his northern neighbour the 51st US state.The 76-year-old monarch, who is also Canada’s head of state as part of the Commonwealth, has never publicly commented on the ambitions of the US president, a noted admirer of the royal family.Despite battling cancer for over a year, Charles accepted an invitation from Canada’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney to deliver the “speech from the throne” at the reopening of parliament on May 27, outlining the new government’s priorities.Queen Camilla will accompany him on the 24-hour visit to the capital Ottawa.“The King and Queen are very much looking forward to the programme...

Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said. The dead included three children in the northern region of Zhytomyr, local officials there said.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the United States, which has taken a softer public line on Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, since President Donald Trump took office, to speak out.“The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” he wrote on Telegram.“Every such terrorist Russian strike is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”It was the largest attack of the war in terms of weapons fired, although...

Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) has made headlines again – this time for its US$4.6 billion debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the world’s largest initial public offering this year. CATL’s shares surged as much as 18 per cent, a signal of both investor confidence and the company’s carefully orchestrated industrial dominance.Beyond a financial triumph, it was a strategic manoeuvre in a rapidly changing geopolitical and industrial landscape. In opting for Hong Kong, CATL signalled a clear intention: to distance itself from mounting US regulatory pressure while deepening financial ties with more receptive markets across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.This approach underscores the growing multipolarity of global finance and technology, where innovatio...

A private train operator servicing parts of southern England, including London, on Sunday became the first to be returned to public ownership under a government plan to renationalise Britain’s much-maligned railways.All UK rail operators are due to be renationalised within the next two years in a key policy launched by Prime Minister Keir Starmer following his Labour Party’s return to government last July after 14 years in opposition.“South Western Railway is now under public ownership. And this is just the start,” Starmer said on social media, naming the service kick-starting his government’s plan.He vowed the renationalisation “will put passengers first”, with “better services, with simpler ticketing, on more comfortable trains”.Train passengers in Britain suffer from frequent cancellati...

Syria’s new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-torn country, a US envoy said on Sunday.“The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains,” US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X, describing it as a “powerful step forward”.“The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure,” he added, referring to American citizens who had gone missing or been killed during Syria’s devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.US-Syria relations have steadily improved since former president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in an Islamist-led offensive in December, ending more than a decade of diplomatic freeze.Tice was working as a freelance...