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A car drove into a crowd during Berlin’s famed LGBTQ parade on Saturday, killing one person and injuring at least 15, prompting police to call off the event in the German capital hours after it had begun. Police said some of the victims had life-threatening injuries. Firefighters and ambulances were out with many emergency workers at the scene to attend to the victims. In a social media post, poli...
A car drove into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride celebrations on Saturday evening, injuring several people, Berlin police said. Police said on social media that they were responding with emergency services to an incident in the city’s central Tiergarten park close to the Brandenburg Gate, where a vehicle had struck multiple people. “We are searching intensively for suspects,” police said. Hundr...
On July 13, more than 200 leading economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates, signed an open letter organised by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Its warning was stark: artificial intelligence may drive an economic transformation “larger than the Industrial Revolution” compressed into a fraction of the time, and that we “must act now” to build the institutions to steer it. We agr...
The Democratic Party in Maine picked its new candidate for a key US Senate race on Saturday, after the original nominee was pressured to drop out over sexual misconduct allegations. Delegates to a hastily organised nominating convention picked Troy Jackson, a former state senate president, to go up against Republican incumbent Susan Collins. “Thank you, Maine. In 101 days, we will defeat Susan Col...
One morning in February 1784, a converted privateer called the Empress of China sailed out of New York harbour. It was bound for a country almost no one aboard had ever seen – China, then ruled by the Qing dynasty. Six months later, it dropped anchor at Canton, the only port where the Qing government allowed Western maritime trade. At the time, the Declaration of Independence was less than a decad...
A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries factory is expected to be the Japan centre for the development and assembly of the next-generation fighter jet to be produced by Japan, Britain and Italy, sources close to the matter said on Saturday. The three members of the trilateral Global Combat Air Program are discussing the roles each will play in the design and manufacture of the jet, with Britain to set up it...
Hong Kong police have smashed a syndicate that used provocatively dressed foreign women to sell drugs at pubs and entertainment venues, arresting three people and seizing HK$5.2 million (US$663,080) worth of narcotics. The arrests came during an operation carried out on Friday to target the income sources of triad societies, Chief Inspector Man Cheuk-hei of the Kowloon East regional anti-triad uni...
As the size of artificial intelligence models expands beyond 1 trillion parameters, a new concept is dominating the computing landscape: “supernode”. At this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s top AI summit, domestic chipmakers from Huawei Technologies to Biren Technology showcased new hardware designed to knit hundreds or thousands of chips together to act as one gian...
Two men died when a light aircraft crashed into a single-family home in the northern German state of Lower Saxony on Saturday. A police spokesman reported that initially one body was recovered from inside the aircraft in Ganderkesee, near Bremen. The second body was found later. Emergency services had been searching for the missing second passenger for hours. The aircraft is believed to have taken...
At least one person died when a light aircraft crashed into a single-family home in the northern German state of Lower Saxony on Saturday. A police spokesman reported that one body was recovered from inside the aircraft in Ganderkesee, near Bremen. It was initially unclear whether anyone else was on board the aircraft when it crashed. Search operations by the fire department were still under way a...
Hong Kong lawmakers have said they gained new insights on how best to assist the government in creating the city’s first five-year plan following an unprecedented study trip to Beijing that wrapped up on Saturday. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Legislative Council president Starry Lee Wai-king shared key takeaways from the week-long trip, highlighting a delegation meeting with Xia Baolong, director ...
China finished the first high-speed railway tunnel under the Yangtze River on Friday, marking a major step forward in the construction of a line that will one day connect the inland of the country with the coast. The 11.9km (7.4-mile) Caiyuanba Yangtze River Railway Tunnel links two districts in Chongqing and will be a key link in a high-speed line between two key hubs in the southwestern megacity...
Beijing’s soft power drive to win African hearts through cinema was on display recently in Bujumbura, where Chinese dragon and lion dances merged with sacred Burundian drums to open Chinese Film Week. The Chinese embassy in Bujumbura, the economic capital of Burundi, said the July 15 event offered “a beautiful example of cultural exchanges between the two countries” and that both sides were determ...
Hong Kong hotels and guest houses are required to provide fire escape hoods to ensure customer safety, with authorities rolling out a grace period for the sector, the city’s home affairs minister has said. Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak Mei-kuen also said on Saturday that the government would discuss implementation arrangements with the sector soon, after some representatives flagg...
India’s education minister resigned on Saturday, handing a major victory to youth protesters who had demanded he quit to take responsibility for examination paper leaks, and who erupted in celebration on news of his departure. “We have done it,” said Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party that led the protests, to loud cheers at the Jantar Mantar protest site in New Delhi. India’s b...
A People’s Liberation Army helicopter’s unprecedented flight in the Taiwan Strait has raised concerns in Taipei that Beijing is rehearsing a new kind of operation for a potential cross-strait conflict. Taiwan’s defence ministry said it detected four PLA aircraft, including a helicopter and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), operating around the island on July 20 and the following morning. The helic...
Hong Kong authorities issued 21 fixed-penalty notices in the first six days of a citywide ban on smoking on construction sites, the labour commissioner has revealed, describing the situation as not ideal. Commissioner for Labour Sam Hui Chark-shum said on Saturday that about 530 construction sites had been inspected during the first six days of the ban, which took effect on July 17. Apart from the...
Hong Kong authorities issued 21 fixed-penalty notices to workers in the first six days of a citywide ban on smoking at construction sites, the labour commissioner has revealed, describing the situation as not ideal. Commissioner for Labour Sam Hui Chark-shum said on Saturday that about 530 construction sites had been inspected during the first six days of the ban, which took effect on July 17. Apa...
Hong Kong authorities issued 21 fixed-penalty notices to workers in the first six days of a citywide ban on smoking at construction sites, the labour commissioner has revealed, describing the situation as not ideal. Commissioner for Labour Sam Hui Chark-shum said on Saturday that about 530 construction sites had been inspected during the first six days of the ban, which took effect on July 17. Apa...
Close to 170 mainland Chinese motorists are expected to arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday under an expanded cross-border travel scheme, with hotels rolling out accommodation, dining, shopping and parking packages to attract the new visitors. The Southbound Travel for Guangdong Vehicles scheme was extended to cover five more cities – Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou and Zhaoqing – from Saturday, w...
Heatwaves come and go, and while this is happening with increasing frequency and intensity – as this year’s record-breaking temperatures show – they slip from attention once things cool off. What does not disappear is the lasting and costly damage they do to the basic infrastructure we rely on in our daily lives. Ultra-hot days and nights can result in the deaths of many people (those who cannot a...
Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Tehran-allied Houthi movement edged closer to opening a new front in the Iran war overnight, after Riyadh bombed the port city of Hodeidah in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike on one of its ships in the Red Sea. The exchange marks the latest escalation since the Houthis, known formally as Ansar Allah, imposed an embargo on Saudi shipping on Monday, disrupting maritim...
A father in central China, who spends 6,000 yuan (US$880) a month on “growth shots” for his daughter, has ignited a heated online debate regarding height anxiety. According to mainland media outlet Dazhong Daily, the father, surnamed Li, lives in Changsha, Hunan province, and consistently pays for growth hormone injections for his 12-year-old daughter. Before starting the treatment, the girl exper...
On a sunny July afternoon along the shores of Hong Kong’s Lamma Island, the receding tide revealed an unassuming patch of greenery that scientists describe as the “ultimate underwater superheroes” for boosting marine biodiversity. Seagrass – an easily overlooked marine plant – can lock away climate-warming carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforests. But levels of this vital vegetation in loc...
On a sunny July afternoon along the shores of Hong Kong’s Lamma Island, the receding tide reveals an unassuming patch of greenery that scientists describe as the “ultimate underwater superheroes” for boosting marine biodiversity. Seagrass – an easily overlooked marine plant – can lock away climate-warming carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforests. But levels of this vital vegetation in loca...
The administrator of the fire-hit Hong Kong estate is still settling contracts and gradually issuing refunds to owners after organising tens of thousands of documents, the city’s home affairs minister has said in response to residents’ concerns. Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak Mei-kuen said on Saturday that Hop On Management Company, the government-appointed administrator of Wang Fu...
US missiles struck targets across Iran on Friday and President Donald Trump vowed “major military punishment” for Tehran and its Houthi allies in Yemen, though he once again left open the door to a diplomatic deal with Iran. Separately, the US military said it had fired on and disabled a tanker ship after it was “repeatedly warned” and “didn’t comply” with the American blockade on Iranian ports. ...
A social media user has been arrested on suspicion of making a bomb hoax, which included threats of violence, in comments posted on the South China Morning Post’s Instagram account. The 20-year-old suspect, surnamed Hui, posted two comments under an SCMP Instagram post titled “Hong Kong Disneyland rolls out afternoon tickets, extra cooling to beat the heat” on Thursday night, claiming that he woul...
Five years after graduating from a vocational school in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, Chen Hao found himself working as a salesman for a local electronics factory. His daily routine involved exhausting trips between corporate clients, and he had not seen a pay rise for years. The 26-year-old decided he wanted a change. “Everybody in Shenzhen is talking about artificial intelligence, s...
For years, Syria was a wound the world watched fester: a country carved up by war, sanctioned into isolation and reduced to a byword for state collapse. Its economy needs US$216 billion to rebuild, according to World Bank estimates. This month, for the first time since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, it began to look like it might actually get there. On July 8, the government of Ahm...
