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Firefighters raced on Tuesday to subdue huge wildfires that have forced unprecedented evacuations of tens of thousands of people across France and Spain, as western Europe braced for another heatwave. The fires have torn through a region already battered by a blisteringly hot and dry summer. Crews were seeking to capitalise on more favourable weather before a new wave of higher temperatures settle...
US President Donald Trump eulogised Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday as a fixture of American politics and unflinching foreign policy hawk, as the leaders of Israel and Ukraine joined Washington’s most powerful at his funeral. Earlier in the day, lawmakers paid tribute at the Capitol Rotunda, remembering one of the last prominent Republicans to advocate for muscular US military power a...
US President Donald Trump eulogised Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday as a fixture of national politics and unflinching foreign policy hawk, as the leaders of Israel and Ukraine joined Washington’s most powerful at his funeral. Earlier in the day, lawmakers paid tribute at the Capitol Rotunda, remembering one of the last prominent Republicans to advocate for muscular US military power a...
Senator Lindsey Graham, the son of pool hall owners who rose to become one of his generation’s more influential US politicians at home and abroad, was being eulogised Tuesday as a “swashbuckling” public servant and “true American original” during memorial services in Washington. Graham’s remains arrived at the US Capitol, where the Republican served for more than 30 years as an indefatigable deal ...
A Hongkonger has described being “quite scared” as a 7.1-magnitude quake shook Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture where she and her boyfriend were travelling, while the city’s travel authority confirmed that about 200 members of tour groups visiting the region were all safe. Leon Chan, 18, recounted to the South China Morning Post that she and her boyfriend had just got off a bus on the west sid...
A Hongkonger has described being “quite scared” as a 7.1-magnitude quake shook Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture where she and her boyfriend were travelling, while the city’s travel authority confirmed that about 200 members of tour groups visiting the region were all safe. Leon Chan, 18, recounted to the South China Morning Post that she and her boyfriend had just got off a bus on the west sid...
China’s emergence as a global biotechnology innovation hub has become a source of strategic concern in the United States, prompting policymakers in Washington to re-evaluate how to respond to its growing influence, according to a recent report by a leading analytics firm. “The country’s latest biotechnology success is strategically important, with implications extending beyond healthcare innovatio...
Telling a Hong Kong judge found to have plagiarised submissions in his judgments to retire early is a sufficient penalty, as he has already suffered reputational damage and is losing tens of millions of dollars in forgone salary, allowances and pension payouts, legal experts have said. A spokesman for the judiciary confirmed on Tuesday that Justice Wilson Chan Ka-shun would be eligible for early r...
Singapore’s economic growth should remain firm in the second half of 2026 although a major uncertainty is the sustainability of the AI investment boom, the head of its central bank said on Tuesday. Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Managing Director Chia Der Jiun, speaking at the release of the central bank’s annual report, said the Middle East conflict also posed risks, but for now global AI...
Footprints left on a muddy lakeshore in northern Kenya around 1.43 million years ago are providing new insight into the size and behaviour of a species in the human evolutionary lineage that was the last of its kind, known for extensive anatomical adaptations for eating tough vegetation. The species, Paranthropus boisei, is known mostly from skull and tooth fossils. Now researchers working along ...
The struggle between the US and China over who will lead in artificial intelligence is one of the defining competitions of our time. In the third part of our exclusive interview with a key player defining Washington’s policy on AI, Jacob Helberg, US undersecretary of state for economic affairs, gives a commitment to the Philippines on the Pax Silica Initiative. Philippine President Ferdinand Marco...
The struggle between the US and China over who will lead in artificial intelligence is one of the defining competitions of our time. In the third part of our exclusive interview with a key player defining Washington’s policy on AI, Jacob Helberg, US undersecretary of state for economic affairs, gives a commitment to the Philippines on the Pax Silica Initiative. Philippine President Ferdinand Marco...
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) will launch a global hunt for its next leader to guide the institution to “fresh ideas” and through a coming “transformation”, the head of its governing council has said. HKU council chairman Peter Wong Tung-shun announced details of the recruitment on Tuesday, a day after president and vice-chancellor Xiang Zhang announced he would leave the post in 2028. “Univer...
Oman presented Iran with a plan backed by Gulf states to manage the Strait of Hormuz, including collecting voluntary fees for using it, a Gulf source and a Western diplomat told Reuters on Tuesday. The plan could serve as a basis to end the disruption to trade through the strait caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. President Donald Trump, who abruptly called off a two-week US bombing campaign ov...
Malaysian police have raided 32 premises hosting online scam activities in Forest City in the state of Johor, arresting 335 people and seizing assets worth about 1 million ringgit (US$245,000), according to the state police chief. The operation was carried out on July 15, targeting two areas that had been identified as hubs for call centres running online fraud activities, Johor police chief Ab...
Beijing has launched a drone research hub in Tibet near Mount Everest in an effort to exploit its high-altitude advantage in the ongoing competition for technological dominance between the US and China. The Plateau Drone R&D Application Centre was recently unveiled by Xizang University, state news agency Xinhua reported earlier this month. Xizang is the official Chinese pinyin name for the Tibet a...
Beijing has tightened its rules on the sale of military equipment to ban its sale through unauthorised channels. “In recent years, some business operators have openly sold, online and offline, goods … such as decommissioned and scrapped military equipment, causing an adverse impact and creating security risks,” an administrative notice issued by multiple state bodies said. The notice – made public...
India’s latest youth protests began after examination papers were leaked. They could ultimately be seen as a referendum on the country’s development model. The immediate trigger was the controversy around the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), India’s highly competitive medical entrance exam. Evidence surfaced that examination papers had been leaked and sold. This scandal affected mill...
In Orwellian totalitarianism, two plus two can equal five. But with American hegemony, things can be A and not A at the same time. Earlier this month, Washington declared war on the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose very existence, it claims, poses an “intolerable” challenge to America’s sovereignty. But, citing an international maritime law, it also led a coalition of 14 mainly Western co...
Confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ongoing Ebola outbreak reached 3,262, its ministry of health said in an overnight update, nearly the same as the 2018-2020 outbreak that is the largest ever recorded in the country. Data from the Congolese health ministry showed that 1,437 patients have died out of the 3,262 cases, in what officials have said is the fastest Ebola outbreak on re...
A running club in Bali’s expatriate hub of Canggu has become the latest flashpoint in an enduring debate over whether Indonesians are being sidelined in parts of their own country. Indonesian immigration authorities have blacklisted two Dutch nationals linked to Entourage running club after an online outcry over the alleged exclusion of locals from the popular group. The incident echoes long-stand...
China’s Moonshot AI has made its latest artificial intelligence model Kimi K3 available for public download, as its open-source strategy and more support for non-Nvidia ecosystems trigger heated debates across Silicon Valley. On Monday, the Chinese AI start-up not only released the model’s “weights” – the underlying parameters that encode its intelligence – but also made available key infrastructu...
This year’s US-led Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) military exercises around Hawaii displayed a higher level of integration of new technology in allied operations, with deterring Beijing in mind, experts said. From Japanese land-based anti-ship missiles to US attack submarines and exploding drone boats, allied forces linked troops on shore with aircraft, surface and undersea vessels to form a single n...
Worried Hong Kong parents who bought Friso, a popular powdered infant formula brand, are taking their children for medical check-ups and are seeking replacements after a batch of the product was found to contain excessive levels of lead. One mother told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday that her five-month-old baby was staying in hospital for observation after the child consumed the same bat...
Two US-developed treatments for breast cancer and a degenerative eye disease will undergo large-scale clinical trials in the Greater Bay Area in a collaboration involving Hong Kong, Shenzhen and a pharmaceutical start-up founded by a former lawmaker. The agreement was formalised on Tuesday when Health Hope Pharma founder Dr Dennis Lam Shun-chiu signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greater...
The sudden resignation of Bank Indonesia’s governor highlights a dilemma that he and his central bank peers in the region have faced in calibrating interest rates – either tighten policy to defend weakening currencies and contain inflation, or loosen it to support pro-growth mandates – according to analysts. Perry Warjiyo’s exit has fuelled speculation that he was under pressure to do more to supp...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China and Slovakia should explore cooperation in clean energy, robotics and artificial intelligence, as the European nation navigates growing trade tensions between Beijing and the EU. Xi told his counterpart Peter Pellegrini that mutual trust has continued to deepen between the nations. The Slovak president is on a three-day visit to China, the first by the ...
China has seen a spike in Covid-19 in recent weeks, overtaking influenza as the top respiratory pathogen for the first time this year, but most patients experienced mild symptoms, while the medical authorities said data suggested the infection rate was significantly lower than last year’s peak. The spread of the Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant has reached a “moderate transmission level”, according to the...
An annual e-commerce shopping festival supporting Hong Kong’s small and medium-sized enterprises will expand into the Asean region for the first time via Singapore and Malaysia, with plans to include other countries in future. The Trade Development Council, the organiser, said on Tuesday that the third edition of the annual Hong Kong Shopping Festival, launching next month, had attracted a record ...
