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Longer-term vision and policies with continuity mapped out in Hong Kong’s inaugural five-year plan, along with the latest policy blueprint, offer investment opportunities and more stability for investors, according to experts and commentators. Hong Kong marked a historic milestone on Wednesday when Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unrolled the city’s first five-year development plan with his fifth...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s invitation for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to visit Kyiv has created a diplomatic dilemma for the Japanese leader, who is under pressure to show firmer support for Ukraine without further antagonising Russia. Zelensky extended the invitation through Eisuke Mori, speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives, during his visit to the Ukrainian capital earlier...
US President Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut trade with the European Union after the bloc proposed to make Canada its first-ever associate member. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen raised the prospect a day before Canadian leader Mark Carney was due to address the European Parliament. Her pitch comes as both Canada and the European Union seek to pivot away from an aggressive US under Trump...
Struggling to breathe through the acrid haze emanating from wildfires on Indonesia’s Borneo Island, residents said on Wednesday they feared for their health but had little to do but wait out the foul-smelling hazard. Indonesia, which shares Borneo with Malaysia and Brunei, is grappling with forest fires that have ravaged swathes of the island, partly caused by the El Nino climate phenomenon that h...
The US Congress on Wednesday passed a bill to strengthen sanctions on Russia by targeting Moscow’s leading energy buyers – China and India – just days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Washington for a bilateral summit with President Donald Trump. The US House of Representatives cleared the “Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026” by a 262-159 vote, making its...
Britain’s King Charles took the unusual step on Wednesday of responding to criticism by the brother of his late first wife Diana, saying via a spokesman that grief could impact reason, judgment and memory. The assertions, made in a soon-to-be published book, relate to the now-monarch’s conduct in the days after Diana’s death in 1997. Diana was killed at the age of 36 when the car carrying her ...
The criminal trial of Huawei Technologies on racketeering charges shifted this week into a slower, more laborious pace in what is expected to be a weeks-long trial as the US Government sought to establish on Wednesday that Huawei was intent on learning about a proprietary robot developed by US telecommunications carrier T-Mobile. Matthew Skurnik, assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of N...
As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player. In the first part of this two-part series, Wency Chen and Mia Nurmamat examine how the southern island province of Hainan is betting on a growing aerospace cluster to rewrite its economic playbook beyond tourism. On Hainan’s northeastern coast, launch towers rise abruptly from a flat ...
As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player. In the first part of this two-part series, Wency Chen and Mia Nurmamat examine how Hainan province is betting on a growing aerospace cluster to rewrite its economic playbook beyond tourism. On Hainan’s northeastern coast, launch towers rise abruptly from a flat landscape of coconut pa...
American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser said on Wednesday, looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare after the US revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and ...
American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser said on Wednesday, looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare after the US revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and ...
American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser said on Wednesday, looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare after the US revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and ...
One stormy night last month, a driver surnamed He saw two tall men get out of a car in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and pull a young woman off the street and into the vehicle. During the struggle, her umbrella fell to the ground. She did not appear willing. Suspicious, He followed the vehicle and later reported the incident to local police, supplying them with footage he had recorded. Tha...
Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has turned to regional and Western allies for help as its stand-off with Houthi rebels in Yemen drags on, two regional officials said on Wednesday. The officials said the Saudis have asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air-defence support to the region to help defend against missiles and drones fired by Houthis and other Iran-...
Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has turned to regional and Western allies for help as its stand-off with Houthi rebels in Yemen drags on, two regional officials said on Wednesday. The officials said the Saudis have asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air-defence support to the region to help defend against missiles and drones fired by Houthis and other Iran-...
Using fossilised teeth, scientists have finally taken the T. rex’s temperature – and it wasn’t too different from our own. Researchers once thought that dinosaurs were sluggish, cold-blooded creatures. Later findings challenged that, suggesting that older dinosaurs were warm-blooded and could control their body temperature. Most scientists agree that Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded, but pinning...
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised interest rates for the first time since 2023, defying US President Donald Trump’s demand for cuts, as central bank chief Kevin Warsh stressed the need to combat inflation that has been “too high” for “too long”. The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point to between 3.75 and 4.00 per cent. Warsh...
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, its first hike in three years as the central bank battles high inflation with a move sure to anger US President Donald Trump. The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to raise rates to between 3.75 per cent and 4.00 per cent, citing “elevated” inflation. It added that the rate hike would sup...
Andy Burnham was for years a staunch opponent of Brexit and a vocal supporter of rejoining the European Union. When he became Britain’s new prime minister in July, this seemed to augur well for UK-EU relations – but instead, Brussels is looking past its neighbour and cosying up to Canada. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday proposed Canada could become the first associa...
Hong Kong will expand the use of the yuan in areas including gold trading and cross-border payments, as policy blueprints call for the city’s biggest push yet to internationalise the Chinese currency. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Wednesday devoted part of the city’s first five-year plan and his annual policy address to developing a gold trading ecosystem and creating a regional intellectual...
Hong Kong will strive to raise its expenditure on innovation activities to a level equivalent to 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by around 2030, nearly double the current rate, according to the city’s first five-year plan. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unveiled the ambitious goal, together with measures to boost frontier technologies, including aerospace research, on Wednesday. Among...
Hong Kong police have arrested a man in connection with the death of his wife whose body was found in a flat at a private residential estate. The force said the woman, 53, was discovered with knife wounds to her neck in a flat in block 2 of Heng Fa Chuen in Chai Wan at about 7.50pm on Wednesday, a police spokesman said. She was confirmed dead at the scene. Officers arrested the man, 52, and annou...
Hong Kong police have arrested a man in connection with the death of a woman whose body was found in a flat at a private residential estate. The force said the woman, believed to be in her fifties, was discovered with knife wounds to her neck in a flat in block 2 of Heng Fa Chuen in Chai Wan at about 7.50pm on Wednesday, a police spokesman said. She was confirmed dead at the scene. Officers arres...
Hong Kong’s leader has unveiled the city’s first five-year blueprint, aligned with China’s national development strategy, setting targets to nearly double innovation spending and raise the share of manufacturing and new industries to 5.5 per cent of the economy. In a historically significant new approach, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu prefaced his annual policy address on Wednesday with a compr...
China said it can now predict weather 10 days in advance at a cutting-edge resolution of 5km (3.1 miles), finer than most major systems in routine use around the world. The advance was achieved by a Chinese-developed weather forecasting model running on Sugon 8,000, a massive home-grown computing system built entirely with domestically made AI chips. Most major global forecasting systems have reso...
Hong Kong’s leader has expressed renewed support for the local media industry, including strengthening its global reach and reviewing the code of practice for television to ensure it keeps abreast with the times. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu made the pledges in both the city’s first five-year plan and the policy address he unveiled on Wednesday. In the section on “Develop an East-meets-West Ce...
Hong Kong education authorities will offer a “very attractive” proposal and policy support to encourage schools without survival issues to merge amid the shrinking student population, according to official sources. The government said it might allow aided schools and semi-private Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools to merge and operate across two campuses, though all arrangements remained subject ...
Abdul Malik al-Houthi, an elusive figure who commands a battle-hardened force, scored his biggest military victory in years when his Iran-aligned Houthi militant group swept through Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and tightened their grip on a vital shipping waterway, rattling oil superpower Saudi Arabia. The offensive, which has been accompanied by attacks on Saudi Arabia, has put the Houthis in a str...
A new visa intended to attract international talent to participate in short-term training programmes in Hong Kong could become available as early as the first quarter of next year, the South China Morning Post has learned. The last policy address of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s current term also put the spotlight on five existing or soon-to-launch academies that would seek to train overseas ...
Malaysia will formally invite Myanmar leader Minh Aung Hlaing to visit Kuala Lumpur to discuss efforts to repatriate nearly 200,000 refugees from the war-torn nation that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says have placed a heavy social and economic burden on his country. Refugees from Myanmar, particularly ethnic Rohingya, have faced worsening hostility in recent months in Malaysia, where they are acc...
