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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s state-of-the-union speech offered few details on new trade measures targeting China, but its sharp tone was designed to send a message to Beijing, analysts said. During her speech on Wednesday, von der Leyen warned that a “second China shock” was already affecting Europe and vowed that Brussels would use all available tools to rebalance its trad...
A Malaysian woman has died while scuba diving after she was caught in strong currents in Bali, Indonesia. According to local media portal Bali News, the victim, Siti Nuraini Rusidi, 40, was on a diving trip with a divemaster, boat captain and several other divers when the incident occurred at 11.10am local time on Wednesday. The trip’s divemaster, Eugenius Franciso Ray, 33, had reportedly raised c...
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has issued a withering rebuke to foreigners behaving badly in Thailand following a wave of scandals involving illegal businesses and landholdings including a cemetery, saying the cases have “gone too far” by breaching Thai law and hospitality. Facing mounting public backlash against illegal foreign ownership of swathes of the country enabled by endemic corruption...
It is clear that US President Donald Trump is pushing hard for a fresh summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the coming months. To achieve that, he appears prepared to downgrade and jeopardise the US-South Korea alliance, as seen in his recent move to scale back joint military exercises. For Trump, this will be a purely bilateral exercise, with both Seoul and Beijing totally sidelined, le...
A main contractor and two subcontractors have been fined more than HK$900,000 each for their role in the death of a 38-year-old worker who was electrocuted while handling wiring for solar panels during wet weather at Hong Kong Science Park three years ago. Magistrate Jeffrey Sze Cho-yiu said China Power International Development, the main contractor for solar panel installation works at the park, ...
A UN fact-finding mission on Iran said on Thursday it had reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and sports facility in Iran in February, and that these constituted war crimes. It also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their deadly crackdown on anti-government protests. The findings in a new report by the In...
A UN fact-finding mission on Iran said on Thursday it had reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and sports facility in Iran in February, and that these constituted war crimes. It also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their deadly crackdown on anti-government protests. The findings in a new report by the In...
There are “reasonable grounds” to believe the US committed war crimes against civilians in Iran, who also face “gross human rights violations” from their own government, United Nations investigators said on Thursday. In their latest report, due to be presented to the Human Rights Council on Monday, the independent investigators urged the 47 countries in the council to press for an end to the war, ...
Chinese panellists and experts at the Xiangshan Forum have warned against Japan’s remilitarisation amid reports that Tokyo is considering raising its midterm defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Japan might raise its midterm budget to 3-3.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product in line with Nato and other US allies, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, as the US pushes its allies i...
Beijing has pushed back after the US Congress passed a bill on Wednesday that would allow US President Donald Trump to sanction Russia and its largest energy importers, including China. The bill, named after the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, authorises tariffs of up to 100 per cent on the top five importers of Russian oil and natural gas. In response to a question about the bill, Chinese...
India and Vietnam could turn their competition for “China plus one” investments into a complementary partnership, analysts say, combining New Delhi’s scale and technology capabilities with Hanoi’s manufacturing agility and links to East Asian supply chains. Such a shift could deepen both nations’ roles in global production networks across high-value industries – from electronics and pharmaceutical...
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday welcomed a proposal for Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member, but said he did not mean for a closer alliance to create a new bloc that would rival the world’s great powers. The remarks came after US President Donald Trump suggested the proposed arrangement could be a “hostile act” and threatened heavy tariffs on Europe if he j...
President Xi Jinping has reiterated calls for China to make its supply chains more resilient and self-sufficient while accelerating the creation of a modern industrial system underpinned by advanced manufacturing. Xi’s latest directives, issued at a national conference on advanced manufacturing in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday, were said to be aimed at strengthening the Chinese economy, the st...
While the Chinese idiom, “Having ink in their stomach”, serves as a metaphor to commend the knowledgeable, the act of ingesting ink was a common practice among ancient literati. The earliest documentation of ink drinking dates back to the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589), where it was used as a sanctioned punishment for scholars with illegible handwriting. According to the Book of Sui, th...
When Cindi suffered her first severe psychotic episode a decade ago, she could no longer tell where reality ended and what her mind had created began. “My reality and fantasy [were] all distorted. I had no idea what was real, what was not,” the 38-year-old, who asked to be identified only by her first name, told This Week in Asia. “It was so severe to the point that I couldn’t even recognise my ow...
Hong Kong will be short of 130,000 workers by 2028, about a third less than originally projected, a reduction the city’s labour chief attributed to the development of artificial intelligence and government policies to import labour and top talent. A day after the release of the city’s first five-year plan and annual policy address, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han said on Thursda...
Progress towards reunifying with Taiwan hinges on factors like the island’s level of provocation, retired PLA major general Luo Yan told the South China Morning Post, warning that Taiwan’s leader had challenged Beijing’s red lines. Speaking on the sidelines of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, Luo said the timeline for reunification with mainland China was shaped by “the development of ...
Progress towards reunifying with Taiwan hinges on factors like the island’s level of provocation, retired PLA major general Luo Yan told the South China Morning Post, warning that Taiwan’s leader had challenged Beijing’s red lines. Speaking on the sidelines of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, Luo said the timeline for reunification with mainland China was shaped by “the development of ...
Hong Kong’s property market dodged an immediate hit from the Federal Reserve’s rate hike on Thursday as major local banks kept their prime rates unchanged, but another increase could puncture the market’s relatively fragile recovery, according to industry insiders. The Fed raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point at its latest meeting on Wednesday in the US, but HSBC and other major Hong Kong ...
China’s urban youth unemployment rose last month, as a record influx of university graduates struggles to find work in a job market weighed down by weak domestic demand and the growing adoption of artificial intelligence. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, rose to 18.9 per cent in August from 17.9 per cent in July, according to data released by the National Bureau of Sta...
Over the course of the summer, Russian attacks have been pushing ever deeper into European territory. On August 11, military divers destroyed two drones floating off the coast of Romania near a €4 billion (US$4.7 billion) energy project. Nine days later, Bucharest scrambled two F-16s to take out a maritime drone near the same Black Sea gas platform with hundreds of workers on board. Earlier that m...
Indonesia’s latest ferry disaster has exposed persistent weaknesses in maritime safety oversight, experts have said, with poor enforcement and inadequate supervision continuing to leave passengers vulnerable across the sprawling archipelago. The capsizing of the Virgo Transport 8 in the Java Sea on Sunday has intensified scrutiny of a system that analysts say too often comes under pressure only af...
Taiwan has quietly acknowledged donating a coastguard vessel to the Philippines, potentially adding to Manila’s maritime patrol capacity amid its long-running stand-off with Beijing in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said on Wednesday that “this case” was being handled in line with previous transfers of vessels to the Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu. Unlike those three ...
Taiwan has quietly acknowledged donating a coastguard vessel to the Philippines, potentially adding to Manila’s maritime patrol capacity amid its long-running stand-off with Beijing in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said on Wednesday that “this case” was being handled in line with previous transfers of vessels to the Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu. Unlike those three ...
A diagnosed paedophile who sexually abused 11 girls over 33 years, with the acts ranging from molestation to rape, was sentenced by a Singapore court on Thursday to 21 years’ jail. The victims were as young as five, and included his daughter, granddaughters, nieces and students at an enrichment centre he ran with his wife. The judge noted that the jail term should not be crushing or amount to a li...
US President Donald Trump has urged Beijing to take “more aggressive action” to curb the export of drug precursor chemicals, noting to the US Congress that he had raised the issue “directly” with his Chinese counterpart. Trump’s call comes just days ahead of a planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and just a week after security agencies from the two countries praised progress in cooper...
US President Donald Trump has urged Beijing to take “more aggressive action” to curb the export of drug precursor chemicals, days ahead of his planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It also comes a week after security agencies from the two countries hailed progress in bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics law enforcement. On Wednesday, while releasing the latest annual list of desig...
Authorities in Malaysia have seized several more Israel-bound shipments at one of the country’s biggest ports, according to people familiar with the matter, an apparently new level of scrutiny in a nation where anti-Israeli sentiment runs high. Three containers bound for Ashdod Port south of Tel Aviv were detained at Malaysia’s Tanjung Pelepas port in mid-August and to date had not been released a...
Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr has won a burst of online support among Filipinos who see him as one of Manila’s most outspoken senior officials against China, with some already asking whether it could give him enough political momentum to carry him into the 2028 elections. His latest boost came after a viral moment at the Seoul Defence Dialogue on September 8, where he read out ...
Hong Kong is broadening its equity markets, deepening its offshore yuan business and expanding further into gold trading under its first five-year plan for economic and social development, as the city seeks to defend its standing as Asia’s top financial centre and close the gap with London. Unveiled on Wednesday by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu alongside his 2026 policy address, the blueprint o...
