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Every time Kristaen Albert returns home, he reaches for one of the dozen cans of oxygen on a table by the entrance of his house in Central Kalimantan. The air in his neighbourhood has turned dusty amber, with air quality far exceeding hazardous levels. “My breathing is noticeably heavier whenever I step outside. It’s hard to concentrate and stay focused, and it is really affecting my work,” Albert...
HSBC, Hong Kong’s biggest lender, said on Thursday it would double its artificial intelligence specialist team in the city to 300, a figure much larger than the workforce planned for its recently announced AI centre in Singapore. The announcement comes after Hong Kong’s regulators were reported to have raised concerns about the Singapore hub. The bank would double its AI specialist headcount in Ho...
The roof of a school collapsed in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, killing a teacher and 32 students, mostly aged under 14, health officials said on Thursday, as residents and rescuers scrambled to pull children from the rubble. Twenty more students were taken to hospital after the collapse, which authorities blamed on “weak infrastructure”. Others in the densely populated neighbourhood d...
Twenty-seven pupils and a teacher were killed on Thursday after a roof collapsed at a school in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, a hospital official said. Asim Khan from Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the toll, adding that over 30 people were injured, with six believed to be in a critical condition. A spokesman for the emergency rescue service in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province sa...
Ukraine has resumed its attacks on Russian refineries with a strike at an installation in the Ryazan region, the regional governor said on Thursday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his anger at a “dangerous” withdrawal of US intelligence. Since US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, Kyiv had refrained from...
Ukraine has resumed its attacks on Russian refineries with a strike at an installation in the Ryazan region, the regional governor said on Thursday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his anger at a “dangerous” withdrawal of US intelligence. Since US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, Kyiv had refrained from...
Nepal has weathered three disasters in six weeks, including the deadly August flash flood, making this year one of the deadliest in a country where monsoon rains already frequently wreak havoc. Experts warn that climate change is only making matters worse. The rock-ice avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border that opened the floodgates in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers on August 26 killed more th...
The partner of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung has denied seeking a sexual relationship with her ex-husband when they were young, saying he only remained in contact because their children shared the same mother. Testifying on Thursday, Chris Tam Fong-chun appeared surprised when a defence lawyer suggested he wanted a “romantic and sexual relationship” with Alex Kwong Kong-chi when the...
Slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung’s partner has acknowledged that her former father-in-law helped resolve a dispute over his HK$5 million (US$641,025) gambling debt but maintained he was not obliged to repay it because he believed the company he owed would fold. Chris Tam Fong-chun told the High Court on Thursday that he had refused to repay a loan he took out while gambling at a casino...
Slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung’s partner has acknowledged that her former father-in-law helped resolve a dispute over his HK$5 million gambling debt but maintained he was not obliged to repay it because he believed the company he owed would fold. Chris Tam Fong-chun told the High Court on Thursday that he had refused to repay a loan he took out while gambling at a casino run by Sunci...
More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) after Chinese technology giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial next week. Baidu’s autonomous driving platform, Apollo, will run the trial in Tung Chung from October 21 to November 3, inviting more than 1,000 residents to take part. Iris Wong Man-hei, senior project and business development manager...
More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) after Chinese technology giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial next week. Baidu’s robotaxi platform, Apollo, will run the trial in Tung Chung from October 21 to November 3, inviting more than 1,000 residents to take part. Iris Wong Man-hei, senior project and business development manager for the i...
A South Korean manufacturing company owner accused of severely injuring a migrant worker by firing high-pressure air from an industrial air gun into his body has been sentenced to three years in prison. Judge Koo Na-young of the Suwon district court on Thursday sentenced the owner of a metal-cleaning company, a man in his 60s identified only as A, to three years in prison on charges of aggravated ...
Three weeks into his tenure as Anhui provincial party secretary, Li Lecheng carried out an on-site inspection at China’s home-grown memory chip giant ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) on Wednesday, pledging to grow integrated circuits (ICs) as an emerging pillar industry. During the visit to the company’s headquarters in the provincial capital Hefei, Li urged CXMT to further refine its product p...
Inconvenience is one of the biggest obstacles to recycling, a challenge that prompted a Hongkonger to establish a one-stop recycling service. Jorch Wong Ching-hei left advertising in 2019 and started The Loops Hong Kong after finding that recycling different materials often required travelling to different collection points. With no prior background in the industry, he contacted recycling operator...
A grassland fire in Mongolia has raised fresh concerns in China, underscoring the recurring risk of cross-border environmental hazards. This is not the first time an environmental disaster originating in Mongolia has threatened to cross the 4,700km (2,920 miles) border into China, with the impacts sometimes also affecting the Korean peninsula and Japan. The blaze, which erupted on October 8 in th...
A mild displacement of jobs across the Asia-Pacific region as companies expand their use of AI would trim five percentage points off growth in office space demand in the next few years, according to property consultancy CBRE. In a report released on Thursday it said 3.9 per cent of office jobs were vulnerable to artificial intelligence-driven displacement in developed markets in the region, includ...
Two rush-hour disruptions at Hong Kong’s MTR Lam Tin station within 15 hours could be connected if they involved the same power supply circuit or exposed procedural shortcomings, an engineering expert has said, with a lawmaker urging the rail operator to offer more targeted compensation to affected passengers. The first disruption came on Tuesday evening, when an insulating rubber component in a t...
One message told him to “go to hell”. Others said he deserved to be imprisoned. Death threats poured in. Asians who share a name with one of the men accused of raping a US university student have faced a torrent of online abuse. The alleged 2024 gang rape of a Cornell University student, detailed in a recent lawsuit, has sparked an outpouring of outrage against the seven accused perpetrators. The ...
The EU’s surprise deal with China on hybrid cars last week was supposed to ease the pressure on Beijing. Instead, Brussels is preparing to intensify its crackdown on Chinese trade practices, emboldened by the discovery that its threats are finally delivering results. Now, those driving trade policy for the bloc believe they have landed on a two-track formula. Intensive dialogue is seen to have yie...
Veteran Cantonese opera teacher Leung Sum-yee does not expect every child who enters her classroom to become a performer. If they leave knowing what good Cantonese opera sounds and looks like, she considers that worthwhile too. “My purpose was not to train stars or idols. I wanted more people to understand Cantonese opera and to have more audiences,” she said. That approach has guided Leung throug...
Lorelai Jacinto had worked as a domestic helper in Riyadh for two and a half years before she flew home to the Philippines on September 19, increasingly worried that the conflict in the Middle East was making it unsafe to stay. “When the conflict with Iran happened, I started feeling like it wasn’t safe there any more because I was right there in Riyadh myself, so the bombing, the missiles, were c...
Costa Rica, considered for decades a peaceful enclave in turbulent Central America, has now made fighting drug trafficking one of its main goals. And it is turning to one of its Central American neighbours for inspiration in its hardline crackdown. On Wednesday, President Laura Fernandez inaugurated a mega-prison that emulates the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) that has become a symbol of Sa...
Five Guangdong-registered yachts will sail into Hong Kong waters on Friday when the Southbound Yacht Travel Scheme launches, the city’s marine chief has said, adding that officers will step up patrols. A ceremony marking the scheme’s maiden voyages will also take place. The launch is a key step in the government’s plan to develop Hong Kong’s yacht economy, as outlined in the city’s first five-year...
Pyongyang test-fired two types of cruise missile from a submarine, its state news agency said on Thursday, after weeks of friction with Seoul over a landmine explosion along their border. The missiles were fired into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on Wednesday without “any adverse impact on the security of neighbouring countries”, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said....
Confronted by a fuel crisis beyond its control, Bangladesh’s government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars each month to insulate its people from surging prices. But as growth slows and inflation rises, the new government’s reform plans are being tested before it has had much time to clean up the country’s bad banks or retool its young, abundant – but underemployed – workforce for the AI ...
Issues affecting ageing populations worldwide will form the core of discussions for policymakers and health industry leaders gathered at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit, with a particular emphasis on how practising prediction and prevention can help ensure life is lived to its fullest. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has positioned itself as a global leader in transformative healthcare policy, a...
Like people elsewhere in the world, Chinese people often have nicknames in addition to their official names. Some of these may surprise people from other cultures because they sound humble or even unflattering. Chinese parents have traditionally given their children humble, sometimes vulgar, nicknames – occasionally using animal names such as “dog” or “pig.” The practice dates back to ancient time...
Malaysian property tycoon Lee Yeow Seng is making waves as one of the most aggressive buyers of commercial real estate in Singapore, and he is not done yet. His IOI Properties Group is in exclusive talks and due diligence to purchase two property assets – Chijmes, a retail venue inside a former Catholic convent in its civic district, and the nearby Capitol Kempinski hotel, CEO Lee said in an inter...
Hong Kong secondary school student Agastya Rekhi is just 17, but he has been teaching finance and economics to younger children for nearly three years. Meeting families struggling to understand how prices, investments and economic news impacted their daily lives during voluntary work convinced him that access to information was only part of the problem. How that information was communicated was ju...
