China

Two Royal New Zealand Navy vessels made Wellington's first frigate transit of the Taiwan Strait since 2017 on 18 September, prompting Beijing to warn it remains vigilant against threats to its sovereignty.

Alibaba extracted 151 million exchanges to train its Qwen models, while other operations exposed live Russian defence credentials and surveillance footage linked to the People's Liberation Army.

The number that defines this IPO is not the raise. It is the gap. Shein Global Holdings Limited is pricing its Hong Kong float at up to US$27 billion, a ceiling that sits at less than 28 per cent of the US$98.2 billion valuation it secured in its 2022 private funding round. That is not a haircut.

The number that matters is 9.32. That is how long it took Honor's two-legged robot Lightning to cover 100 metres at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, reaching a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second across a preparatory trial run.

Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey I. Kessler put a number on the gap between what both governments have officially permitted and what has actually moved.

The label is "nature reserve". The practical effect, Washington says, would be to lock Filipino fishermen off waters their families have worked for generations.

Watch the new-orders line and you know where China's factories are heading before output figures arrive. In July 2026, that line dropped to 48.5, the weakest new-orders reading since 2023, and the headline manufacturing PMI followed it down to 49.2, the first sub-50 reading in five months.

The attacker's first move was almost invisible: a single message sent over Telegram. What followed was entirely machine-driven.