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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, one of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said in an interview published on Monday that Russia and Ukraine must compromise to end the war that has raged for more than four years with no end in sight. Lukashenko, whose ex-Soviet state has been improving ties with Washington, also said that he would not rule out meeting US President Donald Tru...
Radar-absorbing materials have long been associated with stealth fighters, cruise missiles and other high-end military platforms for which performance often comes at a high cost. But in China, some stealth coatings could be moving into large-scale industrial production and driving prices down fast. A team from Foshan University reported a low-cost microwave-absorbing composite made from expanded g...
Alibaba Group Holding has launched its first suite of artificial intelligence models for robots, joining a global race to move AI out of chatbot windows and into the physical world. The Hangzhou-based tech giant on Tuesday introduced the Qwen Robot Suite, marking its latest foray into “embodied AI” – machines that can perceive, reason and interact with physical environments. Developed by Alibaba’s...
China’s Miao ethnic group reveres trees, believing that they symbolise the life of humans, they also worship the vegetation at important stages of life. The Miao people, whose population numbers over 10 million, inhabit central and southern China’s Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi provinces, and have a traditional Flower-Jump Festival every year. At this time, people gather around a 10-metre-tall flower t...
Shipowners will not resume transit through the Strait of Hormuz for weeks until they are confident that the US-Iran deal is “material”, the CEO of Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told the Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday. The Iran war that began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes largely stopped shipping through the transit route for around a fifth of the world’s oil and liq...
The drones are grounded, tankers are reportedly moving again through the Strait of Hormuz and an electronically signed memorandum of understanding has formalised the pause. After 108 days, thousands dead and hundreds of billions of US dollars stripped from the global economy, the US-Israel war on Iran has ended – for now. Not with victory. Not with defeat. With a freeze. The United States and Isra...
Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong affairs has recognised the local government’s efforts to push ahead with innovation projects in the Northern Metropolis and has called on the city to seize national opportunities. Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, began a two-day study tour on Tuesday with a briefing by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu. It was attended by Chief Secret...
Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong affairs began a two-day visit on Tuesday with inspections of key projects across the city, focusing on housing, technology and Northern Metropolis developments. Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, greeted residents at a light public housing project on Yau Pok Road in Yuen Long in the morning, accompanied by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-c...
Hong Kong may enter its summer flu season earlier than usual this year, with a peak likely to occur later this month, health authorities have said, urging unvaccinated residents to receive jabs for protection. Dr Edwin Tsui Lok-kin, controller of the Centre for Health Protection, said on Tuesday that influenza activity in the city had increased since May. He noted that the last summer flu season e...
We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Singapore PM Lawrence Wong to visit Russia, first since Ukraine war sanctions Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is set to visit the Russian city of Kazan in a trip t...
We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Singapore PM Lawrence Wong to visit Russia, first since Ukraine war sanctions Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is set to visit the Russian city of Kazan in a trip t...
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s first attendance at this week’s G7 summit aims to turn her rapport with Donald Trump into a bridge between the US president and the bloc’s leaders, as she seeks to cement her image as Japan’s “Iron Lady”. During a working dinner at the three-day meeting which began in Evian, eastern France, on Monday, Takaichi also proposed a joint strategic stockpile partnership to...
Hong Kong’s anti-corruption watchdog has charged former senior staff at the Chinese University Medical Centre over alleged fraud. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said on Monday that it was accusing Lau Mun-cheung, 65, former head and consultant physiotherapist of the institution’s Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre, of falsely claiming that he had personally provided pr...
When Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) held its 11th group wedding for doctoral students on May 31, each of the 187 newlywed couples was presented with a one-carat diamond ring, with the diamonds grown in the university’s laboratory. The gems were developed by Zhu Jiaqi and his team from HIT’s School of Astronautics using a technology that in theory could produce high-purity, single crystal dia...
When Singaporean Kristen Chng watched Chinese indie film Dear You with his father in Suzhou last month, he was reminded of his grandfather’s journey of sweat and hardship after leaving his ancestral village in Guangdong province with little to his name. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, he said, as cinema-goers followed the story of a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letter...
When Singaporean Kristen Chng watched Chinese indie film Dear You with his father in Suzhou last month, he was reminded of his grandfather’s journey of sweat and hardship after leaving his ancestral village in Guangdong province with little to his name. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, he said, as cinema-goers followed the story of a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letter...
When Singaporean Kristen Chng watched Chinese indie film Dear You with his father in Suzhou last month, he was reminded of his grandfather’s journey of sweat and hardship after leaving his ancestral village in Guangdong province with little to his name. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, he said, as cinema-goers followed the story of a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letter...
The images were difficult to ignore. A viral video showed the body of a 35-year-old Indian seafarer on a vessel off Oman, with crew members using cold water bottles in a desperate attempt to slow the decomposition process. He had died last Thursday from medical complications, but it had not been possible to send help or evacuate him from the ship because of the US blockade in the Strait of Hormuz....
Benjamin Netanyahu bet that his joint war alongside Donald Trump would topple Iran’s clerical rulers and bolster himself ahead of the election at home, as the architect of a US-Israeli alliance that would reshape the Middle East. Instead, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is on a collision course with Trump as the US president seeks to extricate himself from the war, with both men’s goals u...
Many Hong Kong shoppers remain undaunted by a mainland Chinese investigation into the food safety practices of popular supermarket Sam’s Club in neighbouring Shenzhen, saying they will still shop for bargains – but more selectively. Despite reports that Chinese regulators had summoned the warehouse retailer over “frequent food safety issues” on Monday morning, the superstore remained busy in the a...
Many Hong Kong shoppers remain undaunted by a mainland Chinese investigation into the food safety practices of popular supermarket Sam’s Club in neighbouring Shenzhen, saying they will still shop for bargains – but more selectively. Despite reports that Chinese regulators had summoned the warehouse retailer over “frequent food safety issues” on Monday morning, the superstore remained busy in the a...
Taiwan’s new website for mainland Chinese to securely report intelligence-related information has sparked debate over whether it is workable. The self-governed island’s National Security Bureau (NSB) on Sunday said it had established a “contact window” to collect political, military, economic and social intelligence from mainland China. The bureau said the initiative was modelled on the practices ...
Taiwan’s new website for mainland Chinese to securely report intelligence-related information has sparked debate over whether it is workable. The self-governed island’s National Security Bureau (NSB) on Sunday said it had established a “contact window” to collect political, military, economic and social intelligence from mainland China. The bureau said the initiative was modelled on the practices ...
An enterprising 19-year-old student in China heads a start-up tech company and is also a philanthropist who donated 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) to sanitation workers at his school. Wei Siyuan graduated from Baoan Middle School in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, last year and was admitted to Hunan University. He also has another identity: the chief executive officer of a company that de...
The custody of a Hong Kong couple’s four-year-old daughter remains in the balance after a Swedish court threw out their attempted appeal against the local social welfare administration’s application to transfer her legal guardianship to a foster family. The Swedish Social Welfare Committee said in a report dated June 3 that the child, Lily, had to be protected from a “rootless and insecure existen...
New homes that Hong Kong developers will launch in the coming days and weeks will serve as a crucial test of the impact of Beijing’s latest capital-control measures, amid signs of recovery in the city’s residential property market. “Seemingly, a number of developers have turned more cautious in launching primary projects of late,” said Jack Tong, director of research and consultancy at Savills Hon...
North Korea’s latest spirited defence of its nuclear arsenal signals a strategy that goes beyond rejecting international calls to disarm and instead leans into mounting global superpower rivalry to legitimise its weapons build-up. The verbal offensive comes as North Korea could soon face renewed pressure to return to the negotiating table. Analysts say the winding down of the Iran conflict may all...
Iranian Americans streamed into the Los Angeles stadium where Iran play their first match at the 2026 World Cup on Monday, with some calling for Iranians to band together and forget politics while others bore symbols protesting the government. The team arrived at the stadium, having flown into the US on Sunday from their training base in Tijuana, Mexico, touching down in Los Angeles just as a dea...
Eight people died when a US B-52 bomber crashed and erupted into a catastrophic fire shortly after take-off at an air force base in California on Monday, officials said. The heavy bomber was on a routine testing mission with a mixture of military, government and civilian contractors on board when it came down in a huge fireball at Edwards Air Force Base, 95km (60 miles) north of Los Angeles. Foota...
Eight people are believed to be dead after a B-52 bomber crashed soon after take-off on Monday morning at a US Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, the US military said. “Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable,” Edwards Air Force Base posted on social media. The cause of the crash is under investigation, officials said. There was no information yet on the crew,...
