Live headlines from trusted global sources. Click any story to open it on the original website.
A Malaysian Islamic university has formally distanced itself from an academic whose viral claims about ancient Malay civilisation – including that Malays could fly and taught the Chinese “flying kung fu” – have drawn ridicule from historians. In a statement on Sunday, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) said Solehah Yaacob, a former linguistics professor, had been terminated from ...
Routine Chinese activities are increasingly being framed as threats by Indian intelligence agencies, raising the risk of New Delhi miscalculating and taking “unilateral countermeasures” against Beijing, a Chinese academic has warned. India has stepped up intelligence-gathering as ties with neighbouring China turned sour in recent years, according to Zhao Ruoxi, a researcher with the Macau Universi...
The likelihood that Hong Kong’s weather forecaster will issue a typhoon signal in the next two days is “relatively low”, although multiple tropical cyclones are set to bring unsettled weather to the city later this week. The Observatory said at noon on Monday that Tropical Storm Narra was expected to skirt the coast of the Leizhou Peninsula in western Guangdong province in the coming days while “m...
Military officials from Uganda and Burundi visited Israel last week to discuss deploying troops to Gaza as part of an international security force envisioned by US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for the fragile ceasefire, according to officials. An official with the board said that Ugandan officials had joined a Burundian military delegation and that Uganda was finalising details of its...
Hong Kong should introduce a tiered risk framework and carry out DNA testing and physical checks to identify dogs with aggressive traits, a veterinarian and a lawmaker have said after a woman and two pets were mauled within a week. Monday’s calls for policy change came after the woman, 33, was found dead in Ping Yeung Tsuen last week. Hours before her body was discovered, she had been attacked at ...
Hong Kong should introduce a tiered risk framework and carry out DNA testing and physical assessments to identify dogs with aggressive breed traits, a veterinary surgeon and a lawmaker have said following three fatal canine attacks within a week. The calls made on Monday come after the latest fatal mauling at a pet training centre, where a 33-year-old woman was attacked by a dog suspected of being...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party would introduce a bill in parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10 per cent of a platform’s global revenue for non-compliance. The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by using existing account information,...
Hong Kong’s leader has called on scientists, leading enterprises and investment institutions from around the world to seize opportunities in the city, describing it as a “golden gateway” for overseas companies to enter the mainland Chinese market and mainland unicorn firms to expand globally. Speaking at the first Global Unicorn Summit on Monday, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu made a familiar pi...
A twist of fate put a guitar in Nene Royal’s hands. Aged seven, she wanted to join the computer science club at her school in Phuket, Thailand, but it was already full. “The only place left was in the music club, and the teacher handed me a guitar,” she told This Week in Asia. “The moment I started playing, something clicked.” Now just 16, the self-taught rocker has a shot at global stardom on the...
We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Why Chinese foreign minister’s trip to South Korea ‘dealt a low blow’ to Seoul 2. How much of an impact will retiring expats have on Hong Kong’s luxury property? 3. Electrochemist Liu Jiawei moves ...
China is gearing up for what could become its next record-breaking semiconductor stock listing as the parent company of chip giant Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC) prepares to go public on Shanghai’s Star Market. CCSH Corporation, parent of China’s top NAND flash maker, planned to sell between 1.98 billion and 2.43 billion shares, equivalent to 10 to 12 per cent of its enlarged share...
The Philippines is positioning itself as Latin America’s bridge to Southeast Asia, testing whether shared history and culture can translate into hard trade figures as Asean and the Mercosur bloc look beyond their traditional partners. Manila’s Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro made the pitch during visits to Brazil and Chile from August 10-13. “Upon this human foundation, commercial bridges t...
Chinese scientists have developed a new tabletop X-ray ghost imaging method that allows them to capture real-time “see-through” video of fast-moving objects. The team’s system could be used to capture dynamic objects such as rotating aircraft engines or biological movements like a beating heart. Importantly, this could all be accomplished with a lower radiation dose and simpler set-up than traditi...
Hong Kong police are investigating a suspected murder-suicide after an 80-year-old man jumped to his death from a residential building, shortly before officers found his 66-year-old wife dead inside their flat with severe head and body injuries. Preliminary investigations showed the couple, married for more than four decades, had planned to divorce due to relationship problems, although authoritie...
Hong Kong police are investigating a suspected murder-suicide after an 80-year-old man allegedly jumped to his death from a residential building, shortly before officers discovered his 66-year-old wife dead inside their flat. The force said on Monday that a security guard from Kwai Chung Estate, a public housing estate in Kwai Tsing, reported that the man had fallen from a height at Chun Kwai Hous...
Australia’s shortage of air traffic controllers is showing signs of nearing a breaking point after the country’s busiest airport recorded at least four near misses in the past month. Since late July, incidents at Sydney Airport included a passenger jet aborting its take-off because there was a plane in its path. In a separate close call, an aircraft that was taxiing had to slam on the brakes to av...
Australia’s shortage of air traffic controllers is showing signs of nearing a breaking point after the country’s busiest airport recorded at least four near misses in the past month. Since late July, incidents at Sydney Airport included a passenger jet aborting its take-off because there was a plane in its path. In a separate close call, an aircraft that was taxiing had to slam on the brakes to av...
Wealthy investors should be ready for higher volatility “for years” as uncertainties around artificial intelligence development and geopolitical risks are set to persist, according to a major private bank. In the past few years, asset prices underwent several roller coaster rides, from US Liberation Day last year to the sell-off of semiconductor shares and US Treasury in recent months. But volatil...
Wealthy investors should be ready for higher volatility “for years” as uncertainties around artificial intelligence (AI) development and geopolitical risks are set to persist, according to a major private bank. In the past few years, asset prices underwent several roller coaster rides, from US Liberation Day last year to the sell-off of semiconductor shares and US Treasury in recent months. But vo...
Three boys from southeastern China offered 10.5 yuan (US$1.5) to a convenience store owner on the brink of closing, igniting a wave of public support. Five years after borrowing money to establish his convenience store in Guangzhou, Chen decided to shut down the shop as business continued to decline. On August 12, three primary school boys visited the store, as they often did, to buy drinks. Durin...
Londoners are facing historic levels of subsidence risk after five successive heatwaves dried out the clay soil on which much of the British capital is built. Insurance claims tied to subsidence – a phenomenon associated with bouts of hot, dry weather that shrink the soil and destabilise the foundations on which buildings stand – hit a record last quarter, according to data provided by the Associa...
Half of Hong Kong’s government departments and public bodies have not disclosed their greenhouse gas emissions data and some calculations have been based on outdated information, a green group has found. The findings from The Green Earth have prompted calls for stronger carbon reporting and the setting of reduction targets across the public sector to align with the city’s goal of achieving carbon ...
The top two executives at Alibaba Group Holding bought a combined HK$120 million (US$15.3 million) worth of the company’s ordinary shares on Monday in a vote of confidence after the tech giant unveiled one of China’s biggest fundraising rounds dedicated to AI. The share placement, the first since Alibaba’s listing in Hong Kong in 2019, was oversubscribed three times amid strong investor sentiment,...
Alibaba Group Holding has sold 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each to raise HK$80 billion (US$10.2 billion) in one of the largest artificial intelligence-dedicated fundraising efforts by a Chinese technology firm. The offer price represented an 8.4 per cent discount to the stock’s closing price in Hong Kong on Friday and a 3.6 per cent discount to the Friday closing price of its New York-list...
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” This famous quote, widely attributed to Mark Twain, keeps playing in my mind as China mourns the death of former premier Zhu Rongji and reflects on his legacy. It was early afternoon on August 12 when I received a message from a friend on the mainland that made my heart sink: “Our much-respected Premier Zhu left us this morning!” As we anxiously...
Residents of Malaysian villages near the Thailand border were left shaken this weekend after hearing loud booms and seeing flashes of light across the frontier, as Thai authorities confirmed more than 50 coordinated attacks on Saturday night. The blasts, heard in Kampung Lubok Gong and Kampung Tersang in Malaysia’s Kelantan state, coincided with a wave of near-simultaneous attacks across 21 distri...
A party led by allies of Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won a landslide in parliamentary elections on Sunday, hours after he hinted that he may stay in power beyond his current term. The Adilet party won 71.2 per cent of votes in the election to a new single-chamber parliament, Kazakhstan’s central election commission said on Monday. The Auyl party representing agrarian interests was s...
A party led by allies of Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won a landslide in parliamentary elections on Sunday, hours after he hinted that he may stay in power beyond his current term. The Adilet party won 71.8 per cent of votes in the election to a new single-chamber parliament, according to an exit poll released on state television. The Auyl party representing agrarian interests was se...
Hong Kong public universities have admitted a record number of students applying outside the local exam system, with the intake surging by 63 per cent over seven years to account for nearly 30 per cent of the 15,000 government-funded places, the South China Morning Post has found. Meanwhile, the intake of home-grown students taking the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam has dropped by 7 per...
Indonesia produces and exports more palm oil than any other country, but when it comes to setting the price, it still plays second fiddle to Malaysia. President Prabowo Subianto wants to change that. On August 14, he announced a new exchange for commodities including palm oil, nickel and coal, targeted to begin operations on January 1. But analysts say dominance in physical supply does not automat...
