SCMP World·Saturday, December 13, 2025

SCMP World - Saturday, December 13, 2025

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Israel says it killed Hamas weapons chief in Gaza

Israel said it killed the head of weapons production in Hamas’s military wing in a strike in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. The civil defence agency and medical sources in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said an Israeli strike killed five people in the Tel al-Hawa district, southwest of Gaza City. The army said there was only one strike conducted in the area which killed the top Hamas figure, Raad Saad. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a joint..

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Belarus agrees to stop balloon flights into Lithuania amid hybrid attack fears

US President Donald Trump’s envoy John Coale said on Saturday that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko had promised to stop weather balloons flying from his country into Lithuania. “He agreed recently to do everything he could to stop the balloons,” Coale told Reuters in Vilnius, after two days of talks with Lukashenko. The balloons, used by cigarette smugglers, have caused over a dozen closures of Vilnius airport in recent months. Lithuania has accused Belarus of conducting a “hybrid attack”

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UK police won’t investigate ex-prince Andrew over Virginia Giuffre allegation

London’s Metropolitan Police said on Saturday it had decided not to launch a criminal investigation into allegations that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles, asked his taxpayer-funded bodyguard to investigate his accuser Virginia Giuffre. In a historic decision, Charles in October stripped the former prince Andrew, 65, of his titles over his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The claim that he asked an officer in 2011 to dig up dirt on Giuffre, his main accuser, for a..

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Trump vows retaliation after 2 US troops and a civilian killed in Syria ambush

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that “we will retaliate” after two US service members and one American civilian were killed in a Syria attack that the US blames on the Islamic State group. “This is an Isis attack,” the president told reporters at the White House before departing for the Army-Navy American football game in Baltimore. He paid condolences to the three Americans killed and said three others who were wounded “seem to be doing pretty well”. The attack on US troops in Syria.

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Belarus frees opposition figure Kolesnikova, Nobel laureate Bialiatski, for US sanctions relief

Belarusian authorities have released Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and key opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova from prison, Pavel Sapelka, human rights advocate with the Viasna rights group, confirmed to Associated Press. Their release comes as authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko seeks to improve relations with Washington. The US earlier on Saturday announced lifting sanctions on the country’s potash sector. Potash plays a key role in agriculture, with Belarus being a key..

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Iran seizes foreign oil tanker suspected of smuggling fuel

Iran said it seized a foreign oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman it suspects of carrying smuggled fuel, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday, citing the chief justice of the southern Hormozgan Province. Mojtaba Ghahremani said 18 crew members have been detained and the vessel was carrying about 6 million litres of fuel, roughly 37,000 barrels. He did not specify the cargo’s destination, nationality or when the seizure occurred. The incident follows Iran’s interception last month..

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Over 1 million in Ukraine lose electricity after Russia strikes energy infrastructure

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Russian nighttime strikes damaged energy infrastructure across Ukraine, as US-led peace talks on halting the war press on. “It is important that everyone now sees what Russia is doing … for this is clearly not about ending the war,” Zelensky said on social media, adding: “They still aim to destroy our state and inflict maximum pain on our people.” He said Russia had sent over 450 drones and 30 missiles into Ukraine overnight. Ukrainian

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Tanzania biotech firm NovFeed wins 7th Africa’s Business Heroes award in start-up bonanza

A microbiologist who revolutionised the production of laboratory-grown seafood protein took home the top prize in the 2025 African Business Heroes awards in Rwanda on Saturday, in the seventh annual edition of the largest event for start-ups of its kind on the continent. Diana Orembe, the founder of Tanzania-based NovFeed, was the winner out of 10 finalists in the awards, which received up to 32,000 applications from 54 countries. She took home US$300,000 in grant funding. Abraham Mbuthia of the

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From climate change to health, global problems need investors to step up

People love to hate governments, and they loathe having to pay taxes. However, from now on, we’ll have to embrace more state intervention and the need for higher taxes or else legislate a more dirigiste system of directing personal savings into investment that isn’t so dependent on markets. This can be either done preemptively or in response to the next financial crisis. It goes without saying that the former course of action is surely preferable to the trauma that will be experienced in the...

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Syria’s year of ‘epic’ transformation earns it Trump’s protection

A year after the curtain fell on the Assad regime’s five-decade reign of terror, Syria is emerging as a rare beacon of renewal in a conflict-weary region. President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadi filled with revolutionary zeal to rebuild his home after 14 years of civil war, has successfully consolidated power and won broad international recognition. Over the past 12 months, Syria has “transformed from a global pariah to a fully fledged, integral component of the international community”,...

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