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“Separatists” and the United States are putting Taiwan in greater danger, China’s state broadcaster CCTV warned on Friday after Washington’s de facto ambassador said the island could convince a potential adversary that landing forces would be very difficult. Raymond Greene, the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, said in a keynote address at the 2026 Taipei Security Dialogue on Wednesday...
A premature baby in southern China, weighing just 330 grams and measuring as large as an adult’s palm, was discharged from the hospital in good health after a 105-day stay. The newborn baby boy was born on May 20, when his mother was only 23 weeks and four days pregnant, at Shenzhen Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital, as reported by the South Daily. Nicknamed Little Zebao, he is recognised as...
The Hong Kong government will table a bill at the Legislative Council in the first half of 2027 to introduce a statutory cooling-off period for prepaid beauty and fitness contracts, the commerce chief has said. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah revealed the timeline on Saturday, two weeks after the government concluded a two-month consultation on the policy prop...
Unvaccinated children and elderly people are four to five times more likely to face serious complications or mortality from flu infections than those who receive vaccinations, a Hong Kong health official has warned, as influenza cases in the city continued to rise. Director of Health Ronald Lam Man-kin issued the warning on Saturday as he pointed out that Hong Kong’s influenza infections had been ...
Coffee bars. Water parks. Retail therapy. North Korea – a country few would associate with leisure or pleasure – is experiencing an unlikely outbreak of fun. Leader Kim Jong-un, himself no stranger to indulgence, is orchestrating new ways for his citizens to spend their wealth. North Korea’s imports of massage equipment have surged 40-fold over the past decade, according to Chinese customs data...
The state funeral for the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, is scheduled for next Sunday, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source confirmed on Saturday that the service would take place on September 20, with details being arranged. State leaders and central government officials are expected to join the funeral committee, in line with previous practice. The SCMP reported earli...
The state funeral for the city’s first chief executive, the late Tung Chee-hwa, is scheduled for next Sunday, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source confirmed on Saturday that the funeral would take place on September 20, with details being arranged. State leaders and central government officials are expected to join the funeral committee, following previous practice. The SCMP reported...
Farmer Pema Dema had never even heard of hazelnuts when she was first recruited to begin growing them on her land in Bhutan’s Thimphu region. “I wondered what sort of a nut it was,” the 58-year-old said with a laugh, looking out over the deep valley and terraced rice fields that unfold below her farm. Now she has more than 140 hazelnut trees on the steep slope overlooking her home, and incorporate...
In the third of our series of previews on the five-year plan and policy address, to be announced on September 16, Leopold Chen and Theodora Yu look at how the city can raise its game and expand the adoption of artificial intelligence. Read part one here and part two here. Spotting bags of construction waste illegally dumped near a temporary refuse collection point in Hong Kong’s Southern district ...
Authorities in China are taking content creators, fan groups and online platforms to task as their aggressive pursuit of online traffic upends lives and public services across the country. State media and local authorities have called on these parties to exercise restraint and stop attention-seeking behaviour from getting out of control. The warnings followed a wave of public attention that hit a ...
Irma smells the fire before she sees it: a column of thick, yellow-tinged smoke rising above the tree line near her small wooden home. She pulls on heavy rubber boots, checks her equipment and drives straight into the impenetrable smog emanating from wildfires devouring the peatland and ancient forests of Borneo. “I am terrified that the flames will reach residential areas. It is extremely dangero...
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s declaration that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has arrived following the release of OpenAI’s latest model, Astra, has ignited debate over whether AI’s holy grail is now reality. As China races to close the gap with the US, leading Chinese AI companies are declaring their ambitions to pursue AGI, even as Beijing appears to maintain a cautious stance towards the con...
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would “love to see” a united Ireland, wading into a politically sensitive subject as he embarked on a two-day Irish visit that blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. After meeting Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin, Trump said reunification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland – split for over ...
US President Donald Trump lands in Ireland under tight security on Saturday for two days of diplomacy and golf, on a trip that again blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. At least 4,000 police and other personnel, including snipers, have been mobilised for the visit, in what has been dubbed one of the biggest security operations ever mounted in Ireland. Trump spok...
US health authorities on Friday declared the nation’s largest recorded cyclosporiasis outbreak over, after contaminated iceberg lettuce sickened thousands, though the FDA said it was still probing how the parasite entered the food supply. The outbreak, which federal investigators linked to lettuce from central Mexico sourced by Taylor Farms, prompted one of the largest food recalls in recent ye...
A two-hour commute for a 14km (8.7-mile) journey. For Julius Dalay and millions of other Filipinos, this is just how public transport works in Manila: a mishmash of jeepneys, trains and buses that commuters are left to figure out for themselves. Dalay, an environmental planner, is resigned to the chaos. Reaching his destination usually involves hailing a jeepney, then cramming into a packed train ...
Leaders from some of the world’s largest emerging economies are gathering in New Delhi this weekend for a summit marking the 20th anniversary of Brics, a fast-expanding group of developing nations. Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with his Russian and Iranian counterparts Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian, are among those meeting in the Indian capital for one of the group’s most closely watc...
The death of Tung Chee-hwa at age 89 has prompted a necessary reckoning with the legacy of Hong Kong’s first chief executive. Two decades after his resignation, the question endures: was Tung a hapless administrator overwhelmed by crisis, or a prescient leader constrained by circumstance and an unforgiving political environment? The contrasting assessments of political scientist Sonny Lo Shiu-hing...
A teenage girl in mainland China travelled to Hong Kong to attend a concert of her idol, resulting in her family losing their government living allowances due to her actions being classified as a form of “high-end consumption.” This incident has sparked intense debate in China and has divided public opinion since it was reported by the mainland news portal, The Cover. According to a social media p...
North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles from the Wonsan area towards the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday. The missiles were launched at around 5.20am and flew about 250 km (155 miles), the JCS said in a statement, adding that South Korean and US authorities were conducting a detailed analysis of their specifications. South Korea...
Products widely considered “ugly” or “bizarre” have gone viral online in China as millions of young consumers embrace the items’ quirky humour and distinctive character. Cumulative sales of such products on Taobao – an e-commerce platform of Alibaba Group Holding – have surpassed 230 million yuan (US$34.3 million) since 2020, when Taobao launched its so-called Uglies Award to celebrate creatively ...
A senior Hong Kong government officer who oversaw faulty lift installation work that stalled the launch of a new block at Queen Mary Hospital was asked to resign and left her post last month to take responsibility for the defects and delays on other projects, the South China Morning Post has learned. But experts have criticised the authorities’ handling of civil service management missteps, which ...
A senior Hong Kong government official who oversaw faulty lift installation work that stalled the launch of a new block at Queen Mary Hospital was asked to resign and left her post last month to take responsibility for the defects and delays on other projects, the South China Morning Post has learned. But experts criticised the authorities’ handling of civil service management missteps, which bypa...
Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the toxic air. Southeast Asia’s transboundary haze crisis was meant to have been brought under control six years ago. But Borneo is once again belching out ...
Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the toxic air. Southeast Asia’s transboundary haze crisis was meant to have been brought under control six years ago. But Borneo is once again belching out ...
Standing in the town that sheltered thousands of stranded Americans after the September 11 attacks, former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien marked the 25th anniversary on Friday with a pointed message for the US: “Never mistake our generosity for weakness.” The 92-year-old former leader, who was prime minister at the time of the attacks, drew a standing ovation after telling his “American fri...
A US congressional advisory body on China said on Friday that leading Chinese artificial intelligence firms declined to meet its members during a recent Beijing visit over concerns that doing so could expose the firms to US sanctions. But members also underscored the importance of the coming AI dialogue between Washington and Beijing. “We were told you guys are a really scary commission, and you d...
Rising tensions over artificial intelligence are shaping the final preparations for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States. Washington and Beijing are discussing the possibility of folding a long-awaited AI dialogue into a broader economic meeting in the days before Xi meets US President Donald Trump, according to several people familiar with the arrangements. The two leaders ag...
Rising tensions over artificial intelligence are shaping the final preparations for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States. Washington and Beijing are discussing the possibility of folding a long-awaited AI dialogue into a broader economic meeting in the days before Xi meets US President Donald Trump, according to several people familiar with the arrangements. The two leaders ag...
Saudi Arabia said it closed its East-West oil pipeline, a key alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz, following multiple attacks on Thursday. The conduit was shut as a precautionary measure, the Ministry of Energy said on Friday in a post on social media. The attacks caused several injuries and emergency teams are taking steps to secure the pipeline and assess its safety, the ministry said. Fig...
