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India’s latest youth protests began after examination papers were leaked. They could ultimately be seen as a referendum on the country’s development model. The immediate trigger was the controversy around the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), India’s highly competitive medical entrance exam. Evidence surfaced that examination papers had been leaked and sold. This scandal affected mill...
In Orwellian totalitarianism, two plus two can equal five. But with American hegemony, things can be A and not A at the same time. Earlier this month, Washington declared war on the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose very existence, it claims, poses an “intolerable” challenge to America’s sovereignty. But, citing an international maritime law, it also led a coalition of 14 mainly Western co...
Confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ongoing Ebola outbreak reached 3,262, its ministry of health said in an overnight update, nearly the same as the 2018-2020 outbreak that is the largest ever recorded in the country. Data from the Congolese health ministry showed that 1,437 patients have died out of the 3,262 cases, in what officials have said is the fastest Ebola outbreak on re...
A running club in Bali’s expatriate hub of Canggu has become the latest flashpoint in an enduring debate over whether Indonesians are being sidelined in parts of their own country. Indonesian immigration authorities have blacklisted two Dutch nationals linked to Entourage running club after an online outcry over the alleged exclusion of locals from the popular group. The incident echoes long-stand...
China’s Moonshot AI has made its latest artificial intelligence model Kimi K3 available for public download, as its open-source strategy and more support for non-Nvidia ecosystems trigger heated debates across Silicon Valley. On Monday, the Chinese AI start-up not only released the model’s “weights” – the underlying parameters that encode its intelligence – but also made available key infrastructu...
This year’s US-led Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) military exercises around Hawaii displayed a higher level of integration of new technology in allied operations, with deterring Beijing in mind, experts said. From Japanese land-based anti-ship missiles to US attack submarines and exploding drone boats, allied forces linked troops on shore with aircraft, surface and undersea vessels to form a single n...
Worried Hong Kong parents who bought Friso, a popular powdered infant formula brand, are taking their children for medical check-ups and are seeking replacements after a batch of the product was found to contain excessive levels of lead. One mother told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday that her five-month-old baby was staying in hospital for observation after the child consumed the same bat...
Two US-developed treatments for breast cancer and a degenerative eye disease will undergo large-scale clinical trials in the Greater Bay Area in a collaboration involving Hong Kong, Shenzhen and a pharmaceutical start-up founded by a former lawmaker. The agreement was formalised on Tuesday when Health Hope Pharma founder Dr Dennis Lam Shun-chiu signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greater...
The sudden resignation of Bank Indonesia’s governor highlights a dilemma that he and his central bank peers in the region have faced in calibrating interest rates – either tighten policy to defend weakening currencies and contain inflation, or loosen it to support pro-growth mandates – according to analysts. Perry Warjiyo’s exit has fuelled speculation that he was under pressure to do more to supp...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China and Slovakia should explore cooperation in clean energy, robotics and artificial intelligence, as the European nation navigates growing trade tensions between Beijing and the EU. Xi told his counterpart Peter Pellegrini that mutual trust has continued to deepen between the nations. The Slovak president is on a three-day visit to China, the first by the ...
China has seen a spike in Covid-19 in recent weeks, overtaking influenza as the top respiratory pathogen for the first time this year, but most patients experienced mild symptoms, while the medical authorities said data suggested the infection rate was significantly lower than last year’s peak. The spread of the Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant has reached a “moderate transmission level”, according to the...
An annual e-commerce shopping festival supporting Hong Kong’s small and medium-sized enterprises will expand into the Asean region for the first time via Singapore and Malaysia, with plans to include other countries in future. The Trade Development Council, the organiser, said on Tuesday that the third edition of the annual Hong Kong Shopping Festival, launching next month, had attracted a record ...
The Exchange Fund, the war chest used to defend the local currency, reported a 37 per cent decline in first-half earnings as losses in Hong Kong equities and weaker bond returns weighed on performance, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on Tuesday. Earnings stood at HK$134.7 billion (US$17.17 billion), down from the record half-year return of HK$214 billion in 2025. The Hong Kong stock p...
An 18-year-old boy in Shanghai, who created a simple app using artificial intelligence (AI) to remind his grandfather to take his medication on time, has gained significant attention on social media and received widespread acclaim online. Ma Kai, a recent secondary school graduate, took the national university entrance exam, known as the gaokao, in June. His story came to light when he was intervi...
Even top American doctors are now relocating to China. On July 21, Westlake University in Hangzhou announced that Shen Yang, a top endocrinologist in Los Angeles, had joined its medical school. Shen’s move is striking because of her credentials, which include over 16 years of clinical experience in the United States, board certifications in internal medicine and endocrinology, and a thriving pract...
On a road in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, Palestinian resident Assem Dawla loaded mattresses and bags onto a truck as concrete yellow blocks marking the edge of Israel’s expanding military zone stood amid the rubble nearby. He said it was the seventh or eighth time since the war began that he and his family had been forced to leave a shelter because of Israeli evacuation orders and the advance ...
A major Malaysian blockchain conference has dropped Siew Pui Yi, an influencer previously known for adult content, as the headline DJ for its official after-party after the country’s digital economy agency withdrew support. The uproar tapped into a familiar cultural fault line in Muslim-majority Malaysia, putting the country’s push to promote itself as a regional technology and crypto hub in tensi...
The Philippines is targeting to recruit more coders, engineers and cybersecurity specialists into the military, as Manila confronts a battlefield increasingly shaped by software, networks and artificial intelligence. Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr on Saturday ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to expand a programme that allows civilian professionals with specialis...
The Philippines is targeting to recruit more coders, engineers and cybersecurity specialists into the military, as Manila confronts a battlefield increasingly shaped by software, networks and artificial intelligence. Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr on Saturday ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to expand a programme that allows civilian professionals with specialis...
Malaysia’s Negeri Sembilan state heads to the polls on Saturday, but a growing portion of its young workers – and their votes – are based elsewhere. Leaving home was never Ammar Idlan Hassan’s long-term plan, but better pay and stronger career prospects eventually drew the 27-year-old project engineer away from Seremban, the state capital. He now lives in Gelang Patah, a border town in Johor, from...
An American company found itself under attack by American artificial intelligence systems. Its unlikely rescuer was a Chinese AI model. It sounds like a Hollywood science fiction film. It’s not. During an internal test, advanced OpenAI models bypassed network restrictions, gained access to the internet and launched autonomous cyberattacks on open-source platform Hugging Face. As engineers rushed t...
A Hong Kong man known on the internet as “Mr Ho” has died, a week after receiving a two-month prison sentence for stabbing his wife. A source told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday that Ho Huen, 79, had died in a public hospital a day earlier. Ronson Chan Ron-sing, former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, also said on social media that Ho had died, citing people close to the...
A Hong Kong man known on the internet as “Mr Ho” has died, a week after receiving a two-month prison sentence for stabbing his wife. A source told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday that Ho Huen, 79, had died in a public hospital a day earlier. Ronson Chan Ron-sing, former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, also said on social media that Ho had died, citing people close to the...
A top Hong Kong transport official has pledged to step up efforts to help the city’s premium taxi fleets recruit drivers, conceding that the number of vehicles on the road remains about one-third below target a year after the scheme was launched. As the five taxi fleets offering premium service marked a year of operations in July, the government said on Tuesday that more than 2,000 fleet taxis and...
The world’s largest known rare earth deposit in northern China could contain far more resources underground than currently reported, according to a leading Chinese geologist. Containing 100 million tonnes of rare earth reserves, the Bayan Obo mine in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region has served as the backbone of China’s rare earth industry for decades. According to Yang Li, a Peking University...
Hong Kong’s push to draw Southeast Asian companies and markets into its financing orbit has scored a milestone, with the Malaysian government preparing to list a US$1.5 billion Islamic bond in the international financial centre later this week. The dual listing – sold on Bursa Malaysia and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) – marks the first concrete result of a visit to Kuala Lumpur led by S...
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake shook Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday, leaving several people dead and dozens of others injured or missing after part of a shopping centre and a huge chimney at a paper factory collapsed, officials said. A tsunami advisory was issued but quickly lifted. At least five people, including two who were found without vital signs at the mall late on Tuesday, w...
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake shook Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday, leaving several people dead and dozens of others injured or missing after part of a shopping centre and a huge chimney at a paper factory collapsed, officials said. A tsunami advisory was issued but quickly lifted. At least three people, including two who were found without vital signs at the mall late on Tuesday, ...
Emergency responders searched early on Wednesday for people feared trapped in a shopping centre in Japan after a major earthquake toppled buildings, sparked fires and reportedly killed one person and injured more than 100. Private broadcaster TBS reported that a “considerable number” of people were feared dead inside the shopping centre in the town of Kashima after the fire brigade said the second...
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture on Tuesday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping centre. Speaking to reporters from her office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said authorities were still assessing the full extent of the damage in the area...
