Secular News

For years, Syria was a wound the world watched fester: a country carved up by war, sanctioned into isolation and reduced to a byword for state collapse. Its economy needs US$216 billion to rebuild, according to World Bank estimates. This month, for the first time since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, it began to look like it might actually get there. On July 8, the government of Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former jihadi commander turned president – established a supreme constitutional...

Ukraine hopes to gain support from Japan as it looks to produce Patriot air defence systems under US licence, citing the expertise of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that manufactures the interceptors for the Japanese defence forces, according to an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “We maintain political dialogue” towards seeking cooperation from Japan, which is one of the few countries granted a licence to build the Patriot surface-to-air missile system, Sergiy Kyslytsya, first...

A mum shared her 10-year-old son's traumatic fight for survival after what appeared to be a common holiday illness developed into a life-threatening E.coli infection

Trains were stopped, schools were halted and residents were evacuated in southern China as Typhoon Noul headed towards the coast. The National Meteorological Centre issued an orange typhoon alert – the second highest level in a four-tier system – on Saturday morning as it moved northwest across the South China Sea at a speed of 20km/h (12mph). It was expected to land somewhere between Hong Kong and Huilai county in eastern Guangdong overnight with wind speeds of up to 151km/h and then move...

Sean McCann, the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, will swim for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Saturday.

Sean McCann, the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, will swim for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Saturday.

Sean McCann, the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, will swim for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Saturday.

Sean McCann, the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, will swim for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Saturday.

Sean McCann, the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, will swim for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Saturday.

Farmers talk of attacks as police receive nearly 9,000 reports of banned hare coursing, the BBC finds.

Farmers talk of attacks as police receive nearly 9,000 reports of banned hare coursing, the BBC finds.

Japan has been establishing dialogue frameworks for artificial intelligence with like-minded countries and Global South partners to reduce reliance on top US and Chinese firms and promote domestic companies abroad. The outreach signals a growing recognition among those countries of the need for cooperation, rather than going it alone, to survive in the increasingly competitive field of AI. At home, Japan is seeking to foster its own domestic AI ecosystem. The move by the United States to...