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The decision by King Charles III to strip his younger brother Prince Andrew of all royal titles and honours marks one of the most dramatic disciplinary moves in modern royal history. Once known as His Royal Highness The Duke of York, Andrew will now be known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a private citizen with no formal royal privileges. But what exactly did he lose, and how much power does the monarch really have to take it all away?What were Prince Andrew’s titles?Before his fall from grace, Andrew held an array of prestigious royal titles bestowed over a lifetime of service and birthright. At his birth in 1960, he was styled “His Royal Highness Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward of York.” As the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, he automatically held the title of Prince and the style His Royal Highness (HRH).When he married Sarah Ferguson in 1986, the late Queen conferred upon him a traditional dukedom, naming him Duke of York, along with the subsidiary ..

AdvertisementChina exportsEconomyChina EconomyAs China churns out artificial gems, is a diamond still forever?China has pioneered the production of flawless artificial diamonds. Some worry they are eroding demand for the real thing
Reading Time:6 minutesWhy you can trust SCMPLuna Sunin BeijingPublished: 6:00am, 26 Oct 2025Updated: 6:34am, 26 Oct 2025Creating a new diamond used to be a process spanning millions or even billions of years. Now, it takes about a week.
AdvertisementInside specialised factories, hulking 50-tonne machines simulate the crushing pressure and extreme temperatures inside the Earth’s crust, transforming seed crystals into flawless, glittering stones in just a few days.
Zhongjing Diamond, a company based in China’s central province of Hubei, has nearly 300 of the machines humming around the clock, which together mint some 600,000 carats of crude diamonds every year.
China has pioneered the production of lab-grown diamonds, allowing its factories to churn out precio..

AdvertisementChina’s private sectorEconomyChina EconomyChina’s growing young billionaire class masks innovation hurdles, analysts sayTechnological innovation – one of Beijing’s top priorities – is helping to drive wealth creation, report says
Reading Time:2 minutesWhy you can trust SCMPMandy Zuoin ShanghaiPublished: 11:00am, 14 Dec 2025While China continues to produce many young self-made billionaires, showcasing its economic dynamism, observers have urged the creation of a more supportive environment, saying that innovation is still being held back.
About 98 per cent of the super-rich in mainland China, with assets valued at US$1 billion or more, are relatively young first-generation entrepreneurs, reflecting the vitality and wealth-creation power of its economy, Swiss bank UBS said in a recent report.
However, Beijing’s tendency to strengthen state ownership and the lack of a loss-proof mechanism – which would shield innovative risk-takers from severe repercussions for failures – hav..