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A Hong Kong security guard who tied up a building resident’s missing cat in a plastic bag and dumped it in a rubbish bin has been sentenced to four months in prison, with the magistrate saying his actions had probably led to the animal’s death in a landfill site. Kwun Tong Court on Thursday sentenced Chou Wing-lok, a former security guard at a residential building in Ngau Tau Kok, for one count of...
Russia pounded Ukraine with dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones, killing eight people in overnight attacks on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, decrying shortages of air defence supplies and urging allies to help. Russia launched more than 70 missiles and about 280 drones, Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram app. The capital Kyiv and the western region of Lviv on Ukraine’...
Russian air strikes killed at least eight people in Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, in attacks extending as far as the western city of Lviv, forcing neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace. The attacks come as President Volodymyr Zelensky returns from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missile...
Russian air strikes killed at least 13 in Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, in attacks extending as far as the western city of Lviv, forcing neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace. The attacks come as President Volodymyr Zelensky returns from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missiles. Air rai...
A senior Hong Kong finance official has hit back at criticism of the city’s prospects as “bias against China”, following a recent commentary by a prominent US economist who asserted that “the Hong Kong of old is over”. The government’s rebuttal did not directly name any specific critic but was published after American economist Stephen Roach wrote an opinion article saying Hong Kong had become a m...
It was important enough to the framers of the US Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights – that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Today, that protection – famously known as “pleading the Fifth” – remains one of the most visible and politically charged safeguards in American law. It has seeped into the cul...
It was important enough to the framers of the US Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights – that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Today, that protection – famously known as “pleading the Fifth” – remains one of the most visible and politically charged safeguards in American law. It has seeped into the cul...
This article was first published on July 26, 2016. PLA, police ready as Pokemon Go arrives in city by Zen Soo and Naomi Ng (Additional reporting by Laura He) Pokemon Go, the augmented reality smartphone game that has taken the world by storm, launched in Hong Kong yesterday (July 25, 2016), prompting multiple warnings against trespassing and straying onto busy roads. The city was quickly abuzz wit...
The 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Japan toppled houses and split open streets in the small city of Yatsushiro, but town official Akio Matsushita is most worried about the invisible threats from the lack of water and power amid the punishing summer heat. Many of the port city’s roughly 58,000 households were still without running water or power on Thursday, two days since the quake...
Nearly three-quarters of Cuba’s hotels have been closed and the island’s tourism sector has been brought to “almost total paralysis” by US sanctions and fuel shortages, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on Wednesday. Detailing the scale of the tourism crisis for the first time, Marrero said seven international chains, responsible for about half of all hotel rooms, had left the island. Tourism had...
US President Donald Trump said he would be “quite disappointed” if his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping broke a personal promise not to arm Iran, even as he revived his accusation that long-time US health official Anthony Fauci helped shield Beijing from scrutiny over the origins of Covid-19. The comments came as Fauci, who led the US response to the pandemic, appeared before a Senate committee. Sep...
US President Donald Trump said he would be “quite disappointed” if his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping broke a personal promise not to arm Iran, even as he revived his accusation that long-time US health official Anthony Fauci helped shield Beijing from scrutiny over the origins of Covid-19. The comments came as Fauci, who led the US response to the pandemic, appeared before a Senate committee. Sep...
Members of a delegation from the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa paid tribute to their ancestors at the historic Ryukyu Kingdom cemetery in Beijing, highlighting a legacy of ties that China is increasingly leveraging as a counterweight in its frictions with Tokyo. During the visit in June – first made public by the Global Times on Sunday – about a dozen delegates travelled to the site southeast of ...
A French teenager who posted a video of himself licking a straw and returning it to an iJooz vending machine in Singapore was fined S$600 (US$465) for public nuisance on Thursday. The clip had gone viral after someone in his Instagram circle recorded it and forwarded the footage to a media outlet, the defence said. Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 19, pleaded guilty to one count of public nuisance,...
The US carried out fresh strikes in Iran on Wednesday, the US military said, further intensifying a five-month-old war that was already expanding beyond its main fronts to embroil additional countries in the region. “US forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8pm ET today,” US Central Command said in a statement. “The strikes are a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks ...
An anime convention in southern China recently evicted several cosplayers after they put their bare feet in water and sold the so-called “feet juice,” which attracted large crowds of onlookers eager to buy. This activity mirrored a similar stunt at a US anime event in May, where a number of participants sold their feet juice for US$10-30 per cup, generating widespread controversy and heated discus...
A new law allowing patients in Hong Kong to reject life-sustaining treatments when they are terminally ill will take effect on Friday. The South China Morning Post looks into how the law will affect patients and healthcare professionals. 1. What is the new law about? The Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance will come into effect on July 31, following its passage by the Legislati...
Zhongji Innolight suffered a rocky start in its highly anticipated Hong Kong stock market debut on Thursday, as the Chinese firm felt the impact of a global downturn in investor sentiment towards the artificial intelligence sector. Shares closed two per cent lower at HK$960 after dropping as much as 10 per cent. The company’s Shenzhen-listed shares slipped 9.15 per cent to 864 yuan, narrowing thei...
Zhongji Innolight saw its share price drop as much as 3 per cent after its hotly anticipated debut on the Hong Kong stock market on Thursday, as the Chinese firm felt the impact of a global downturn in investor sentiment towards the artificial intelligence sector. By 9.33am, it dropped by 2.86 per cent to HK$953. The Chinese firm – a leading producer of optical transceivers used in AI data centres...
If you witnessed someone committing a crime, how confident would you be that you could correctly identify that person later on? As it turns out, studies consistently reveal that we tend to overestimate our ability to recall past events accurately and recognise people we think we have seen before. A 2011 United States study showed that a majority of participants (63 per cent) believe that human mem...
Malaysia is stepping up scrutiny of foreign-run businesses amid concerns from local operators over competition from China. The government wants to retain Chinese investment, technology and affordable consumer goods, while assuring local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that foreign competitors are not subject to different rules. Former trade and investment minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz, now chair...
Three years ago, I warned in these pages that the greatest existential threat to humanity might not emerge from a stray asteroid or a cosmic cataclysm but from uncontrolled artificial intelligence (AI). Today, the trajectory towards an AI Armageddon has not merely accelerated, it has violently careered off the rails of human oversight. The academic debates of previous years regarding a voluntary s...
Singtel, Singapore’s largest telecommunications company, confirmed on Thursday that it was in discussions with multiple parties over a potential stake sale in its Australian telecoms unit Optus, but said there was no certainty the talks would result in a deal. Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider, has been owned by Singtel since 2001. In May, Singtel said it was open t...
For the first time, veteran sailor Thomas Wong Kam-chuen and his partners set sail from Hong Kong on their 46-foot yacht on a two-day trip earlier this month to a holiday island in Zhuhai, testing the waters for more leisure travel to mainland China. After a five-hour voyage from the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter on a sunny weekend, they anchored their Danish-built yacht, DBX2, at Guishan Island, w...
Asean’s optimism in concluding a long-awaited code of conduct (COC) in the South China Sea by the end of the year is not shared by observers who highlight that significant gaps remain in perspectives between the bloc and China, particularly between Beijing and the Philippines. Any consensus on the code is likely to be broad and symbolic, and while “negotiation fatigue” could set in, it is still im...
Five people have died after powerful gusts of wind in Brazil brought chaos to Rio de Janeiro and parts of Sao Paulo state, cutting power and bringing public transport to a standstill. Residents of Rio de Janeiro were taken by surprise when winds of up to 100km/h hit just before rush hour, felling dozens of trees and leaving thousands stranded as the city’s three subway queues ground to a halt. The...
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has maintained its base rate following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep its key rate unchanged, but US traders are already betting on a rate rise in September. The city’s base rate was kept at 4 per cent by the HKMA on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US Federal Reserve also retained its target rate in the range of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent, concluding its f...
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has maintained its base rate following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep its key rate unchanged, but US traders are already betting on a rate rise in September. The city’s base rate was kept at 4 per cent by the HKMA on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US Federal Reserve also retained its target rate in the range of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent, concluding its f...
Hong Kong’s monetary authority has maintained its base rate following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep its key rate unchanged. The city’s base rate was kept at 4 per cent by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US Federal Reserve also retained its target rate in the range of 3.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent, concluding its fifth Federal Open Market Committe...
Hong Kong’s monetary authority has maintained its base rate following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep its key rate unchanged. The city’s base rate was kept at 4 per cent by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US Federal Reserve also retained its target rate in the range of 3.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent, concluding its fifth Federal Open Market Committe...
