HONG KONG, October 27 (Reuters): Hong Kong police on Tuesday detained three people under the city's contentious national security law on suspicion of publishing content to incite others to secede from China. Police said two men and a woman, aged between 17 and 21, were in custody and an investigation was under way. Authorities did not name the suspects but pro-independence group Studentlocalism said three of its members, including Tony Chung, a former leader of the organ

NEW DELHI, October 27 (Reuters): The United States and India signed a pact to share sensitive satellite and map data on Tuesday as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned of the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China. Pompeo, who arrived in New Delhi on Monday along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, said after talks with their Indian counterparts that the two countries had to work together to confront the threat China posed to security and freedom. The annual U.

NEW DELHI, October 23 (Reuters): U.S. Secretary of State of Mike Pompeo is flying to India next week to strengthen strategic ties with a nation that is locked in a military standoff with China, in Washington's latest effort to bolster allies against Beijing. As part of an intensifying pushback against China's economic and military power in the region, Pompeo will also travel to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, two Indian Ocean countries struggling with a mountain of Chinese

VATICAN CITY/BEIJING, October 22 (Reuters): The Vatican and China on Thursday renewed an agreement on the appointment of bishops in China and the Vatican promised to push the communist government to allow more freedom of religion. The accord gives the pope the final say over the appointment of Chinese bishops, and the Chinese government allows all of them, including those hailing from a state-backed Church, to recognise the pope's authority. But conservative Catholics ha

BEIJING/TAIPEI, October 22 (Reuters): China threatened on Thursday to retaliate against the latest U.S. arms sale to Chinese-claimed Taiwan, as the island welcomed the weapons package but said it was not looking to get into an arms race with Beijing. The Trump administration has ramped up support for Taiwan through arms sales and visits by senior U.S officials, adding to tensions between Beijing and Washington, already heightened by disagreements over the South China Sea, Hong

BEIJING, October 22 (Reuters): China and the Vatican have decided to extend a deal on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in China by another two years, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. The accord gives the pope the final say over the appointment of Chinese bishops, and the Chinese government allows all of them, including those hailing from a state-backed Church, to recognise the pope's authority. Signed two years ago, it expired on Thursday. The U.S. State D

LONDON, October 21 (Reuters): Britain's defence minister said on Wednesday that China was seeking to build the world's biggest surface and subsurface maritime fleet. "China is growing the largest maritime surface and subsurface fleet in the world," Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the Atlantic Future Forum. "Our competitors continue to challenge us in the grey zone between war and peace."  

BRASILIA, October 21 (Reuters): Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday that his government will not buy China's Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19, one day after the health minister said it would be included in the nation's immunization program. "For sure, we will not buy the Chinese vaccine," Bolsonaro said on social media, responding to a supporter who urged him not to buy the vaccine. The president said the issue would be clarified later in t

BEIJING, October 21 (Reuters): A Chinese soldier who had strayed across a contested de facto border with India in the Himalayas has been handed back by the Indian side, according to a report by China's official military newspaper, the PLA Daily. The soldier was handed over early Wednesday morning, according to the report. Both countries have amassed thousands of troops in the region after a deadly clash in June. The nuclear-armed neighbours have been locked in a month

JAKARTA, October 20 (Reuters): Japan and Indonesia agreed on Tuesday to speed up talks on the export of Japanese defence gear and technology to Indonesia and to have their defence and foreign ministers meet soon, reflecting concern over China's regional assertiveness. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is on a four-day trip to Vietnam and Indonesia, his first since taking office last month, and part of Tokyo's effort to strengthen ties with the two key countries in

BEIJING, October 20 (Reuters): China's foreign ministry said the United States should immediately stop interfering in its internal affairs, after the leader of the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile met a U.S. State Department official in Washington. Lobsang Sangay, the president of the Tibetan Central Administration (CTA), met the new U.S. special coordinator on Tibet last week. Sangay said it was the first time that the head of the CTA had been received at the State

BEIJING, October 19 (Reuters): China's economic recovery accelerated in the third quarter as consumers shook off their coronavirus caution, although the weaker-than-expected headline growth suggested persistent risks for one of the few drivers of global demand. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.9% in July-September from a year earlier, official data showed on Monday, slower than the 5.2% forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll but faster than the the second quarter's 3

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 10 (IANS): Scientists have found three fossils of 6.4-million years old world monkeys at the Shuitangba lignite mine in northeastern Yunnan Province of China. The discovery indicated that this monkey species existed in Asia at the same time as apes, and are probably the ancestors of some of the modern monkeys in the area, the study published in the 'Journal of Human Evolution', reported. "This is significant because they are some of the very oldest

TAIPEI, October 10 (Reuters): Taiwan wants to have "meaningful dialogue" with China on an equal basis, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Saturday, extending an olive branch at a time of heightened military tension with Beijing, which claims the island as sovereign Chinese territory. Democratic Taiwan has come under increasing pressure from Beijing, which has ramped up air force activity near the island in the past few weeks, including crossing the Taiwan Strait'

TAIPEI, October 9 (Reuters): Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will pledge to strengthen the island's defences and work more with regional partners on security in a major speech on Saturday, at a time when tensions with its giant neighbour China have risen dramatically. Democratic Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has come under increasing pressure from Beijing, which has ramped up air force activity near the island in the past few weeks including crossing the Taiw

Reuters A Chinese experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by the Institute of Medical Biology under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences was shown to be safe in an early stage clinical trial, researchers said. In a Phase 1 trial of 191 healthy participants aged between 18 and 59, vaccination with the group's experimental shot showed no severe adverse reactions, its researchers said on Tuesday in a paper posted on medRxiv preprint server ahead of peer review. Th

Reuters China said on Wednesday that the United States should stop its unprovoked attacks and accusations against China, accusing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of maliciously creating political confrontation and smearing Beijing. Pompeo on Tuesday visited Japan and called for deeper cooperation with Australia, India and Japan to counter China's growing regional influence. "Pompeo has repeatedly fabricated lies about China and maliciously created political confro

TOKYO, October 6 (Reuters): U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Japan on Tuesday to rally support from Washington's closest allies in Asia, calling for deeper collaboration with Japan, India and Australia as a bulwark against China's growing regional influence. The East Asia visit, Pompeo's first in more than a year, coincides with worsening tensions with China. Yet the call for a united front against Beijing is a sensitive subject for Washington's

SINGAPORE, October 6 (Reuters): China is in talks to have its locally-produced COVID-19 vaccines assessed by the World Health Organization, as a step toward making them available for international use, a WHO official said on Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of essential workers and other groups considered at high risk in China have been given locally-developed vaccines even as clinical trials had not been fully completed, raising safety concerns among experts. Socorro Escalate

ROME, October 1 (Reuters): The Vatican said on Wednesday it had denied a request from Mike Pompeo for an audience with Pope Francis, and accused the Secretary of State of trying to drag the Catholic Church into the U.S. presidential election by denouncing its relations with China. The extraordinary remarks from the two top diplomatic officials at the Vatican came after Pompeo accused the Church in an article and a series of tweets this month of putting its "moral auth