SCMP World·Tuesday, December 23, 2025

SCMP World - Tuesday, December 23, 2025

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Trump flew on Epstein jet ‘many more times than reported’, newly released file shows

US President Donald Trump flew on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported”, according to an email from a ‍New York prosecutor that forms part of a new batch of documents about Epstein that were released on Tuesday by the US Justice Department. In an email dated January 7, 2020, the unidentified prosecutor wrote that flight records showed Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet eight times during the 1990s. Among those were at least

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2 men found guilty of UK plot to kill hundreds in Jewish community

Two men were found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community in England, a planned attack investigators say shows the resurgent risk posed by the militant group. Police and prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who went on trial a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the nearby northwest city of Manchester in October, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to..

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Swedish activist Greta Thunberg arrested at UK pro-Palestinian protest

London police on Tuesday arrested Swedish activist Greta Thunberg at a demonstration in support of pro-Palestinian hunger strikers, Palestinian activist groups said. Thunberg’s arrest makes her the highest-profile person to be detained by police since the government banned the Palestine Action group under anti-terror laws. “Greta Thunberg was arrested under the Terrorism Act at the Prisoners for Palestine lock-on protest,” Prisoners for Palestine said in a statement. Thunberg was holding a sign.

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US releases thousands of new Epstein-linked documents

Thousands of new documents linked to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made available Tuesday by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), amid mounting criticism over the pace of the publication and heavy redactions. The documents included a 2020 email from a prosecutor indicating US President Donald Trump had travelled aboard Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported”. At least 8,000 files – around 30,000 pages – were posted online, including...

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Russian ally Belarus is courting both the US and China

As Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine, Belarus – the Kremlin’s only ally in Europe – seeks to improve relations with the United States. Unwilling to remain completely dependent on its giant neighbour, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko seems to be attempting to revive his well-known “multi-vector” foreign policy, balancing between Moscow, the West and China. But will he succeed? As the year nears its end, the 71-year-old Belarusian strongman has made several “humanitarian” gestures...

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Russia ‘strikes Ukraine before Christmas’ with over 650 drones, dozens of missiles

Russia fired more than 650 drones and three dozen missiles at Ukraine in a large-scale attack that began during the night and stretched into daylight hours Tuesday, officials said. At least three people were killed, including a 4-year-old child. The barrage struck homes and the power grid in 13 regions of Ukraine, causing widespread outages in bitter temperatures, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, a day after he described recent progress on finding a peace deal “quite solid”. The...

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At least 5 killed in US after Mexican plane on medical mission crashes in Texas fog

A small Mexican Navy plane transporting a young medical patient and seven others crashed on Monday near Galveston, killing at least five people and setting off a search in waters along the Texas coast, officials said. Four of the people on board were Navy officers and four were civilians, including a child, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement. Two of the passengers were from a non-profit that provides aid to Mexican children with severe burns, including transports to a Galveston hospital. US...

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No need for needles? US approves Wegovy pill for weight loss

US regulators on Monday gave the green light to a pill version of the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy, the first daily oral medication to treat obesity. The US Food and Drug Administration’s approval handed drug maker Novo Nordisk an edge over rival Eli Lilly in the race to market an obesity pill. Lilly’s oral drug, orforglipron, was still under review. Both pills are GLP-1 drugs that work like widely used injectables to mimic a natural hormone that controls appetite and feelings of...

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Forget the US dollar. Watch water and energy resources instead

As 2025 draws to a close, it marks an important milestone in the reconfiguration of the global economic system. Every century is defined not only by changes in technological leadership and shifts in global power, but also by the restructuring of the global financial system. The 20th century was the century of the US dollar, but with the arrival of the 21st century, the contours of the global macroeconomic system have begun to change. A recent International Monetary Fund study, “Playing with...

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Trump unveils ‘Trump-class battleship’ in US shipbuilding push

US President Donald Trump announced the US Navy would build a new “Trump-class” battleship as part of the White House push to modernise a fleet that has been hobbled by years of cost overruns and delays. A poster displayed at the event at Trump’s gilded Mar-a-Lago estate featured an artist’s rendering of a sleek-looking warship dubbed the USS Defiant, cutting through choppy waters with a laser beam shooting from its deck and smoke billowing from a target in the background. Next to the ship was a

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