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President Trump announced that a "large military force" is heading toward Iran while warning of imminent secondary tariffs on countries that trade with Tehran. The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has been redeployed from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, and the administration is coupling military threats with economic measures to try to deter Tehran.

U.S. officials are considering a full withdrawal from Syria after the Damascus transitional government began reasserting control over Kurdish-held east and northeast areas. Security concerns about thousands of Islamic State detainees and the possible collapse of the Syrian Democratic Forces have prompted accelerated transfers of prisoners to Iraq and a reassessment of the American mission.

The U.S. has moved around a dozen fighter jets and support aircraft from Europe to Jordan while a carrier strike group advances toward the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, reinforcing American air and naval presence amid rising tensions with Iran. The deployments enhance rapid-response and sustained operations but also increase the risk of escalation with Tehran and its regional proxies.

A viral video showing a Zhang Xiaoquan kitchen scissor handle snapping has reopened scrutiny of the century‑old brand, exposing product‑quality issues and weak customer service. The crisis comes amid a far larger financial implosion: the controlling shareholder’s aggressive expansion and cross‑guarantees have left Zhang Xiaoquan enveloped in nearly ¥6bn of risk, prompting judicial restructuring and asset auctions.

President Trump’s public retreat from paying to “buy” Greenland highlights the mismatch between strategic ambition and political, legal and fiscal reality. While Greenland’s location and mineral wealth make it strategically valuable, any change in its status would face steep constitutional hurdles, allied resistance and large, hard‑to‑define costs.

China’s private-sector dynamism is on display: a domestically built commercial passenger spacecraft opened 3 million-yuan ticket sales, while TikTok formalised a U.S. data-and-content entity to keep American users connected. Markets and commodities reacted: gold hit a record high and equities rallied in technology, materials and consumer niches, even as local governments roll back high-stakes school exams and industrial automation tests promise large efficiency gains.

International Composite Materials told investors that its domestically developed low‑dielectric glass fibre for 5G has found use in high‑end phones and wave‑transparent parts for high‑frequency communications. The product, part of the firm's electronic cloth range used in PCBs, underscores China's push to domesticate advanced materials for RF hardware, though the company did not disclose scale or customer names.

Fund holdings disclosed in China’s 2025 Q4 reports show a concentrated shift: CATL, two optical‑communications suppliers and Zijin Mining join Guizhou Moutai among five stocks with fund holdings above RMB 100 billion. Managers pared back positions in several high‑growth industrials while topping up banks, insurers and resource names, and FOF allocations favoured short‑duration bond products.

A public clash over 2025 shipment figures between Chinese humanoid-robot maker Yush Technology and independent research firms highlights a sector moving from prototype to production. Discrepancies stem from differing definitions and data sources, but both industry reports and company statements point to rapid volume growth and a critical 2026 inflection point focused on real-world deployment, paying customers and robot ‘brains’.

Walmart China and Xiaohongshu opened a jointly branded concept store in Shenzhen that combines Walmart's supply-chain and private-label strengths with Xiaohongshu's trend insights to create interest-led, experiential shopping. The "Mashu" store replaces category shelves with themed "interest islands" and co-branded SKUs, signalling Walmart's strategic shift from mass merchandising toward customer-centred, omnichannel retail.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned at Davos that AI will act like a ‘tsunami’ for labour markets, affecting an estimated 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% globally. She said young people face the greatest disruption because many entry-level roles are being eliminated, and stressed that governance has not kept pace with technological change.

Beijing’s defence ministry has publicly framed targeted strikes against Taiwan’s leadership as an available option, an unprecedented rhetorical escalation that follows a US cross‑border special operations episode. The move aims to deter secessionist moves, complicate allied intervention calculus, and has prompted regional hedging such as Singapore’s proposed contingency troop withdrawal.

A UN report found at least 21 UN personnel were deliberately killed in 2025, a sharp rise from prior years and concentrated in hotspots such as Abyei, the DRC and the Central African Republic. The figure excludes at least 119 UNRWA staff killed in the Israel–Palestine conflict, underscoring a wider crisis in protection for humanitarian and peacekeeping personnel that threatens operations and humanitarian access.

A blast outside a Chinese-run restaurant in Kabul killed at least one local employee and injured others, bringing the everyday risks of exile life into sharp relief for the small Chinese community in Afghanistan. The attack highlights the vulnerability of China’s expanding non-military presence in Kabul and raises questions about how Beijing will protect its citizens while maintaining engagement in a fragile, impoverished country.

China’s first 054B frigate, the Luohe (545), has completed its first year in service, showcasing notable improvements in stealth, sensors and weapons density compared with the previous 054A. The 5,000‑ton ship narrows the capability gap with destroyers and Western frigates, fitting Beijing’s strategy of producing a higher number of capable, cost‑effective surface combatants for extended far‑sea operations.

China’s Foreign Ministry declined to confirm media reports of a prospective April visit to China by U.S. President Donald Trump or a reciprocal year‑end visit by a Chinese leader, while offering similarly cautious language about a possible visit by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The non‑committal response reflects Beijing’s preference for tightly managed summit diplomacy amid high strategic stakes in U.S.–China and China–U.K. relations.

China’s securities regulator found that Yu Han used 67 trading accounts from mid-2019 to mid-2024 to manipulate the shares of Boshi Eyewear (博士眼镜), netting roughly CNY 510.9 million. The CSRC ordered confiscation of the illicit gains, an equal fine for a total penalty around CNY 1.02–1.03 billion, and imposed a three-year market ban and trading prohibition.

TikTok unveiled a two-company U.S. structure that places data and content oversight in a new joint venture controlled by U.S. managers, while ByteDance retains control of the high‑value parts of the business and ownership of the recommendation algorithm. The arrangement aims to balance U.S. security concerns with ByteDance’s desire to keep its core technology and revenue streams, but it will face continued regulatory and political scrutiny.

China’s securities regulator has imposed heavy fines and lifetime market bans after finding serious violations at Zhejiang Ruifengda Asset Management and related private funds. The move forms part of a broader regulatory drive to curb illegal fundraising, asset misappropriation, self-dealing and other abuses in the private fund sector, with potential criminal referrals to public security authorities.

Gold has surged to within sight of $5,000 an ounce as geopolitical tensions, weakening US fiscal metrics, persistent central-bank buying and expectations of lower real rates reprice long-term financial risk. The rally is prompting both retail and corporate shifts into gold-linked instruments, while analysts caution against speculative chasing and highlight enduring structural drivers that could sustain higher prices.