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For materials scientist and chemist Liu Jiawei, moving to Hong Kong supported her pivot into launching her own research group. After a decade immersed in Singapore’s research ecosystem, Liu sought a transition that would keep her closer to family in mainland China while maintaining an international, high-standard research environment. Now establishing her laboratory at City University of Hong Kong...
Hong Kong’s weather forecaster will assess next week whether to issue a typhoon warning as Tropical Storm Narra is expected to edge closer to the western Guangdong coast. The Hong Kong Observatory said on Saturday morning that the storm was expected to linger over the vicinity of Beibu Wan, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin, before having a higher chance to turn east to northeast gradually early ne...
Hong Kong’s weather forecaster will assess next week whether to issue a tropical cyclone warning as Tropical Storm Narra is expected to edge closer to the western Guangdong coast. The Hong Kong Observatory said on Saturday morning that the storm was expected to linger over the vicinity of Beibu Wan, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin, before having a higher chance to turn east to northeast gradually...
Hong Kong’s weather forecaster will assess next week whether to issue a tropical cyclone warning as Tropical Storm Narra is expected to edge closer to the western Guangdong coast. The Hong Kong Observatory said on Saturday morning that the storm was expected to linger over the vicinity of Beibu Wan, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin, before having a higher chance to turn east to northeast gradually...
Dengue infections in Malaysia have surged 56.2 per cent this year, with 58,079 cases and 55 deaths recorded so far, even as take-up of the dengue vaccine remains low. Dr Shanmuganathan TV Ganeson, president of the Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations, Malaysia, said cost was one factor behind the low vaccine uptake. A two-dose regime could cost between 420 and 500 ringgit (US$...
Three months after leaving an inland port far up the Congo River, a consignment of timber arrived in Vietnam this summer concealing a secret it would take customs officials three weeks to uncover: nearly 1.2 tonnes of elephant ivory, smuggled halfway across the world. Tracking data reviewed by This Week in Asia shows the shipment travelled some 9,000 nautical miles (16,700km) – with stops in Sri L...
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, concluded his visit to South Korea on Friday, but declined to back Seoul’s push for multiparty peace talks involving the North. His two‑day trip, which followed President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Pyongyang in seven years in June, coincided with US President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea and call for further talks w...
At least 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded on Friday when several Russian drones struck a shopping centre in central Ukraine, authorities said, with President Volodymyr Zelensky promising a response to what he called an “act of barbarism”. Regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said that 22 children were among the wounded in the daytime attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih, which is Zelen...
Some young women in China are dyeing their armpit hair, transforming a once-stigmatised trait into both a fashion statement and an assertion of bodily autonomy. The trend is not without precedent. Lady Gaga made headlines with green underarm hair in 2011, while brightly dyed armpit hair and “glitter pits” – underarms embellished with glitter – have since surfaced on social media worldwide. In rece...
Hong Kong physiotherapy graduates are facing a job crunch amid ongoing healthcare budget cuts and a surge in new practitioners entering the industry, with one representative saying 60 applicants had competed for one position in a remote care facility for elderly residents. Data also showed that the proportion of applicants admitted to Polytechnic University’s (PolyU) prestigious physiotherapy prog...
South Korean investor Carol Kim thought Hong Kong-based CSOP Asset Management’s new flexible leverage structure would cushion losses in its SK Hynix leveraged product, only to take a 77.2 per cent hit after the fund maintained its maximum exposure every day following the revised rules. “I expected the flexible leverage structure to soften the blow, but it actually felt like it was dropping even ha...
The roar from thousands of People’s Justice Party (PKR) delegates gathered at a grand convention centre in Melaka last weekend exuded all the confidence expected of a party leading Malaysia’s government. The past three years have been the culmination of more than two decades of struggle for PKR, with it finally achieving its long-held goal of installing leader Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister and w...
A punishing drought is draining Europe’s great rivers, pushing the Loire, the Danube and the Rhine towards record lows. At the Kaub gauging station, the reference point for shipping on the Rhine – Germany’s economic artery – the water level fell to 17cm (6.7 inches) this month, a low unseen since measurements began in 1880. Meanwhile, wildfires are burning across southern Europe, forcing the evacu...
TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance have agreed to pay US$400 million to settle a US Justice Department lawsuit accusing the video-sharing app of violating children’s online privacy laws, resolving a major federal case as the platform’s American operations remain under intense political scrutiny. The settlement, announced on Friday, resolves allegations brought by the Justice Department and th...
It is not the most enticing reading material: “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.” But this 59-page report, issued last month by the US Treasury Department, reveals much about contemporary America. Remember the joint intervention by Japan and the United States in the international currency market to prop up the yen at the end of July? By now...
The US Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue construction of his White House ballroom project for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that would halt much of the development. The court’s action, known as an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider the administration’s formal request to let it continue working on the US$...
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Friday it was time to end the months-long Middle East war with the US because Tehran appeared to be in a stronger position than Washington. Talks between the long-time foes remain on hold, and the war started by the US and Israel in February has been locked in a stalemate. Tehran is keeping the key Strait of Hormuz partially shut, and Washington is persi...
Turkey has sought an international arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of “genocide” linked to Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the justice minister announced Friday. Turkey has become a virulent critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has frequently accused Netan...
Southeast Asian leaders have long insisted they will not be forced to pick sides in the great-power rivalry between the US and China. But their posture is about to be further tested. This time, the battleground is AI. While Washington wants the region locked into Pax Silica – its bid to build a China-free artificial intelligence supply chain – Beijing wants its neighbours to join China’s own World...
An 18-year-old man armed with a sword attacked students at a Swedish high school on Friday, killing one person and injuring three, and police shot and detained him as media reported the attacker was a former student at the school. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school in the central Swedish town of Fagersta, which has about 13,000 residents. The school had just re...
A man armed with a sword severely injured two teenage boys, as well as a third person, at a Swedish high school on Friday, and one person was later detained, local authorities said, triggering a massive response from emergency services. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school, in the small town of Fagersta, in central Sweden. The school had just opened after summer re...
A man armed with a sword injured several people at a Swedish high school on Friday and one person was later detained, local authorities said. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon at the Brinell high school, which has some 450 students aged 16 to 20, in the town of Fagersta in central Sweden. “A call was received regarding a case of ongoing deadly violence at a school in Fagersta,” police sa...
A former assistant warden at a residential home for the intellectually disabled in Hong Kong has been accused of raping a resident multiple times two years ago. Chung Pui-kei has been charged with five counts of rape of a mentally incapacitated woman who lived at a home in Tai Po linked to the Hong Chi Association, an NGO, between July and August 2024. Prosecutor Human Lam Hiu-man outlined the fiv...
Tesla has issued the largest-ever product recall in mainland China’s electric vehicle (EV) market, as Elon Musk’s firm pledges to fix a door-handle issue affecting nearly 3 million cars. The massive recall comes as Chinese regulators move to ban retractable car door handles over safety fears, after a fatal incident last year in which a driver was left trapped inside a burning vehicle as passers-by...
A US artificial intelligence start-up backed by OpenAI has built its first in-house model on Chinese lab Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, highlighting a growing shift by Western tech firms towards Chinese open-weight systems amid soaring development costs. San Francisco-based legal tech provider Harvey, whose high-profile backers also include Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, said on Thursday that it...
Midway through a three-month negotiating period with Beijing, new data show the trade balances of 24 European Union member states are still moving in what Brussels considers to be the wrong direction. China extended its trade surplus over all but three EU members in July compared to a year earlier, calculations based on new Chinese customs figures showed. In some instances, the monthly swing was d...
Midway through a three-month negotiating period with Beijing, new data show the trade balances of 24 European Union member states are still moving in what Brussels considers to be the wrong direction. China extended its trade surplus over all but three EU members in July compared to a year earlier, calculations based on new Chinese customs figures showed. In some instances, the monthly swing was d...
Prince Harry and other high-profile claimants must make an interim payment of £9.54 million (US$13 million) towards the legal costs of the Daily Mail publisher after losing their privacy lawsuits, London’s High Court ruled on Friday. Last month, judge Matthew Nicklin comprehensively rejected the case brought by King Charles’ younger son, singer Elton John and five other figures, rejecting alleg...
China’s three state-owned telecoms giants have made billable artificial intelligence tokens a key focus of their growth strategies, as AI adoption accelerates across the country and computing demand soars. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all pointed to AI and computing operations as key growth drivers in their first-half financial disclosures released this month, presenting usage of t...
A pair of landmark rocket recoveries in recent weeks has brought China a step closer to mastering reusable launch technology – a breakthrough analysts said could give the People’s Liberation Army an advantage in combat by increasing the resilience of its satellite-supported “kill chain”, the process of identifying, tracking and engaging a target. In a first for China, commercial rocket company Lan...
