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Donald Trump has reportedly reversed his opposition to a 2025 agreement under which Britain transfers sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after UK and U.S. officials secured new assurances on the continued operation of the Diego Garcia military base. The development preserves a key U.S. outpost in the Indian Ocean while reopening questions about colonial-era dispossession, legal exposure and alliance management.

A Chinese Eastern Theatre Command ground‑based air‑defence unit has been operating from mobile shelters along the coast, maintaining relentless tracking and readiness for hours at a time. The deployment underscores China’s emphasis on mobility and survivability in coastal defence, while illustrating the personnel strain and escalation risks that accompany persistent high alert.

At a UN Security Council session, China warned that Islamic State, al‑Qaeda and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement remain active and are exploiting instability in Afghanistan and Syria. Beijing urged a unified, non‑selective international response and pressed Afghan and Syrian authorities to act to prevent their territories becoming terror safe havens.

Iran and the United States will meet in Muscat to discuss nuclear issues, but Tehran insists the agenda exclude its ballistic‑missile programme, which Washington wants included. The clash over scope reflects deeper strategic disagreements and raises the likelihood that talks will be limited unless both sides accept sequencing or parallel tracks.

A retail‑led mania in silver, fuelled by Reddit and heavy inflows into SLV, sent prices sharply higher before a rapid 40% crash triggered by steep CME margin increases. Forced liquidations and a wide ETF discount handed large arbitrage profits to institutions with access to liquidity and authorised‑participant privileges, leaving many small investors wiped out. The rout highlights structural imbalances between leveraged retail traders and well‑capitalised institutions, and will likely spur regulatory and market‑structure scrutiny.

Chinese young travellers are exploiting interline pricing and expanded transfer services to buy "boomerang" tickets: cheap multi‑segment fares that include long layovers for sightseeing before returning home overland. The trend reflects price sensitivity, holiday‑stacking behaviours and spare capacity at regional airports, and has implications for airlines, hotels, OTAs and policy makers seeking to smooth travel demand.

A minor livestream sale of inexpensive spring couplets by popular host Dong Yuhui ignited disproportionate criticism framed as cultural and social harm. The episode exposes a deeper conflict between entrenched distribution interests and a rising class of livestream anchors whose factory‑to‑consumer model lowers prices and challenges incumbents' margins.

Iran and the United States are set to hold talks in Muscat on February 6, but Tehran insists the agenda be limited to nuclear issues while Washington is pushing to include Iran’s ballistic missile programme. The disagreement over scope, combined with recent military signalling from Iran, raises the stakes for a fragile negotiation that could either defuse or inflame regional tensions.

Kweichow Moutai’s stock rallied after the company expanded direct sales of its flagship Feitian product and implemented more flexible pricing, pushing its market value to about ¥1.94 trillion and lifting consumer sectors. The move has sharpened investor perceptions of Moutai as a consumption bellwether, even as precious metals saw a sharp, leverage‑driven pullback.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met in Cairo on 4 February and pledged to deepen strategic cooperation to address rising regional tensions. The public rapprochement between historically adversarial capitals signals a pragmatic pivot aimed at managing crises such as the Gaza conflict, Libya and wider eastern Mediterranean flashpoints.

A recent visit to the Chagola outpost on the Tibetan Plateau highlights the PLA's use of high-altitude garrisons to project steady border presence. Soldiers endure extreme weather, training intensively and remaining on duty through major holidays to sustain deterrent capability and reassure both domestic and regional audiences.

An Eastern Theatre Command air force unit used a 75th-anniversary gala of self-produced performances to stage its institutional history as a tool of political education and morale-building. The unit pairs theatrical retellings of past missions with compulsory history lessons and intensified long-range training, linking cultural work to operational readiness and signalling deeper patterns in PLA professionalisation.

China’s internet and health regulators have jointly removed and sanctioned social‑media accounts spreading false claims about the state’s centralized drug and consumable procurement programme. The initiative aims to curb panic, protect public confidence in volume‑based procurement, and signal stricter platform accountability as Beijing tightens online governance around health policy.

A People’s Liberation Army company that preserves the memory of a 1962 hero has used that legacy to anchor a difficult shift from traditional infantry tactics to data-driven, combined-arms warfare. After an initial failure in integrated training, the unit retooled its training, encouraged bottom-up innovation and fused a culture of sacrifice with modern technical skills to improve combat readiness on a high-altitude frontier.

Queen Máxima has joined the Dutch army as a reservist and begun training, saying the move reflects a belief that national security can no longer be taken for granted. The enlistment is both symbolic and practical — reinforcing public support for defence while aligning the monarchy with broader European efforts to strengthen military readiness.

Economist Yao Yang predicts a period of relative stability in U.S.‑China relations in 2026, arguing that strategic retrenchment in Washington will reduce bilateral volatility. He warns, however, that China’s domestic recovery depends on housing prices and local government spending, and urges large, explicit central fiscal support to revive demand.

Guangdong province has committed to adding 21,000 5G base stations and 26,000 10G PON ports in 2026 as part of a broader push to align digital infrastructure expansion with AI, industrial upgrading and platform‑economy growth. The targets form one element of a ten‑point provincial agenda that couples rapid build‑out with enhanced governance, risk controls and party integration at the start of China’s new five‑year planning cycle.

Mercedes’s mid‑cycle S‑Class update — redesigning over 2,700 parts — makes China both the launch pad for new assisted‑driving and parking features and the lead developer of the rear‑seat entertainment system. The move reflects a strategic shift: China is increasingly an R&D and innovation hub whose locally developed technologies will be rolled out globally, while Mercedes pursues a flexible product mix across combustion and electric drivetrains.

China’s finance, customs and tax authorities have authorised a zero‑tariff scheme for qualifying imported goods bought by residents inside Hainan Free Trade Port, exempting customs duties, VAT and consumption tax within a positive list and an annual per‑person cap of RMB 10,000. The policy applies to Hainan residents and foreign residents with permits, requires purchases at designated duty‑free shops, forbids resale, and places anti‑smuggling responsibilities with the Hainan government.

Mobileye has outlined plans to expand from automotive autonomy into humanoid robots after acquiring Mentee Robotics, with on‑site validation in 2026, production partnerships in 2027 and scaled deployment starting in 2028. The company sees robotics and driving automation as complementary components of a broader "physical‑AI" strategy that leverages simulation, perception and long‑tail generalization techniques.