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A 51-year-old hiker who went missing on Lantau Island has been found dead after a two-day search amid a heatwave in Hong Kong. Authorities launched a search for the man, surnamed Chan, on Thursday following a report by his wife to police that morning that he had not returned home after leaving for a hike on Wednesday. Chan had told his family he planned to hike on section 8 of the Lantau Trail, wh...
I did not pay much attention during maths and science classes in school. I could never get into the mindset for STEM study, but I can see there is comfort in the fact that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter will always be pi, or that the quadratic formula will always produce the right answer when applied correctly. I envied my many STEM friends for their skills, their fields of ...
China and British delegations discussed concrete plans to strengthen military engagement during talks on Friday on the sidelines of a major security event in Singapore. Major General Meng Xiangqing, who led the Chinese delegation to Asia’s largest defence summit, the Shangri-La Dialogue, met United Kingdom military officials, signalling both militaries’ willingness to maintain communication. Meng...
Lo Wai-kwok, the 73-year-old chairman of Hong Kong’s largest pro-business party and a former lawmaker, has announced his engagement to a Cantonese opera actress 42 years his junior, becoming the talk of the city’s political circles. Lo’s engagement to 31-year-old Yemina Yu Chung-yan comes five years after the death of his wife Adelina Wong Siu-chun. The couple, whose wedding will be held in Octobe...
Lo Wai-kwok, the 73-year-old chairman of Hong Kong’s largest pro-business party and a former lawmaker, has announced his engagement to a Cantonese opera actress 42 years his junior, becoming the talk of the city’s political circles. Lo’s engagement to 31-year-old Yemina Yu Chung-yan comes five years after the death of his wife Adelina Wong Siu-chun. The couple, whose wedding will be held in Octobe...
The Shenzhou-21 astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after staying in Tiangong space station for more than 200 days, establishing the record for longest on-orbit stay by a Chinese crew. The trio touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region at around 8.11pm aboard the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Their stay was extended by one m...
A Philippine anti-corruption court ordered the arrest of a prominent senator on Friday over allegations he pocketed a kickback of millions of dollars in a flood-control project, in the latest crisis to entangle the Senate. Senator Jinggoy Estrada surrendered and posted bail before the Sandiganbayan court, allowing him to remain free while the case proceeds. The court barred Estrada from leaving th...
China has condemned the launch of maritime boundary negotiations between Japan and the Philippines, calling the talks “completely illegal and void”. The protest followed a joint statement released on Thursday after a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr in Tokyo. During the talks, the two sides agreed to elevate bilateral ties to a com...
Hong Kong’s health minister has said the government will not lose out if the medical centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) repays its public loan early, rejecting calls for a penalty. Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau’s comments came at a Legislative Council health services panel meeting on Friday, when CUHK Medical Centre CEO Chung Kin-lai also revealed that the hospital’s financia...
Hong Kong’s health minister has said the government will not lose out if the medical centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) repays its public loan early, rejecting calls for a penalty. Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau’s comments came at a Legislative Council health services panel meeting on Friday, when CUHK Medical Centre CEO Chung Kin-lai also revealed that the hospital’s financia...
Chinese delegates to the Shangri-La Dialogue anticipate Washington will strike a less confrontational tone on Taiwan than it did last year, even as the issue remains the largest point of contention in China-US relations. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to speak at the annual security conference in Singapore on Saturday morning. His remarks will be closely watched by Beijing and Wash...
Shi Yongxin, former abbot of the famous Shaolin Temple, has been sentenced to 24 years in jail for crimes including embezzlement and taking bribes, state news agency Xinhua reported. Shi was also fined 3.5 million yuan (US$516,000). More to follow …
The European Union and China are entering a new, more turbulent era in trade relations, as China has evolved from Europe’s favoured customer into a sophisticated competitor, a Brussels lobbyist has said. Chinese businesses are likely to face tougher scrutiny in the EU market as a result, with Brussels already taking steps to diversify its trade and mulling more robust measures to shield local indu...
Kenyan authorities have arrested eight students on suspicion of arson over a fire at a girls’ boarding school that killed 16 students, police said on Friday. The fire at the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil in west-central Kenya broke out in the early hours of Thursday and also injured 79 students. Fires are common at Kenyan schools, with many set by students protesting harsh disci...
Tung Chee-hwa’s tenure as Hong Kong’s first chief executive reflected “a deep belief in dialogue”, the China Institute of America has said during an awards ceremony honouring the leader for his decades-long efforts to foster understanding between the world’s two superpowers. The China Institute Centennial Award was presented at an event commemorating the non-profit institution’s 100th anniversary ...
Hong Kong’s first chief executive Tung Chee-hwa has been honoured by the China Institute of America for his decades-long efforts to foster dialogue and understanding between the two countries. The China Institute Centennial Award was announced and presented at an event commemorating the non-profit institution’s first centennial in New York on Thursday. Tung, who served as Hong Kong’s first chief e...
A new artificial intelligence voice model from Alibaba Group Holding has beaten out Western rivals OpenAI and xAI on a major global benchmark, underscoring its technical edge in capturing complex Chinese dialects and accents. Fun-Realtime-TTS-Preview, developed by Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab, has secured the fifth spot on the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena leaderboard with a score of 1,190. It was the ...
Vietnam and the Philippines have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, but as Vietnamese President and Communist Party leader To Lam heads to Manila next week, analysts say the two neighbours are increasingly focused on what they can do together rather than what divides them. Lam’s two-day state visit on Sunday and Monday comes as both countries mark 50 years of diplomatic relations and a dec...
Asian technology firms are facing a “costly paradox” as they try to navigate an increasingly uneven global AI rule book, with divergent compliance requirements in the European Union and the United States threatening to blunt their competitive edge. Analysts say the challenge is acute for Asian companies. While the EU has a single, comprehensive and legally binding artificial intelligence framework...
Some elderly landlords in Hong Kong have said they cannot afford renovations costing as much as HK$400,000 (US$51,060) to ensure their subdivided flats comply with new regulations and they may be forced to take units that rent for HK$3,000 a month off the market. At a media session on Friday, four landlords owning subdivided flats in Sham Shui Po and Yau Ma Tei said they had registered for the gov...
When US President Donald Trump returned from Beijing earlier this month, he hailed his visit as a historic breakthrough, trumpeting “fantastic trade deals” he sealed and boasting about his close ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But on the margins, Beijing had sought to extract a price by pushing Washington for concessions on Taiwan. According to people familiar with the matter, Beijing pressed...
A Chinese official who cried about her village’s flood disaster has faced sarcastic comments for wearing a pair of gold earrings. The incident took an unexpected turn when a majority of online observers showed support for her. Shimen county in central China’s Hunan province was hit by heavy rains from May 17, which triggered severe floods and landslides. According to an official report on May 22, ...
US authorities have found six more bodies following a chemical leak at a paper plant in Washington state, an official said on Thursday, with three of a total 11 victims still missing. A huge tank holding tens of thousands of gallons of a highly caustic substance imploded on Tuesday at the plant in Longview, Washington state, sparking a major search operation. Rescuers had initially confirmed two p...
South Korea’s plans to build nuclear-powered submarines by the mid-2030s will spur a US-allied network of advanced underwater capabilities near the first island chain, strengthening deterrence against potential adversaries such as China and North Korea, analysts say. The South Korean defence ministry this week announced its basic plans to build the country’s first nuclear-powered submarine, giving...
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will address Asia’s main annual defence gathering on Saturday, with US allies perhaps hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s ticking off. Hegseth’s morning speech will be the main event at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, particularly as Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun is not attending for the second year in a row. Other speakers on the agenda include the ...
There seems to be no end to the harm arising from US President Donald Trump’s madcap war on Iran. Go beyond the direct tragic impact across Iran itself, the collateral damage from Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and its ad hoc assaults on US allies in the region: beyond the burgeoning impact of shortages of oil, gas, hydrogen, helium and sulphur, and the prospect of food shorta...
Malaysia’s religious authorities can ban teachings they consider deviant, send followers to rehabilitation classes and take group leaders to court. But they have not stopped banned or fringe Islamic movements from finding new followers online, according to officials, as some groups move abroad, rebrand or use social media to keep reaching Malaysians beyond the immediate reach of state enforcement....
Around 86 per cent of children seeking places in Hong Kong’s public primary schools have secured one of their top three choices through the central allocation system, a record high and up from about 79 per cent last year, as applicant numbers fell 16 per cent to 16,345, the steepest decline on record. But a representative from a primary school council said the competition for discretionary places ...
US defence industry leaders are pushing for deeper commercial cooperation with Taiwan to strengthen its military capabilities, as the island seeks faster ways to bolster deterrence amid Beijing’s mounting military pressure. But they cautioned that such business deals could not replace traditional American arms sales regarded as the backbone of Taiwan’s defence. Speaking at the Taiwan-US Defence In...
Nato member Romania said on Friday that a drone injured two people in a southeastern city during an overnight Russian attack on neighbouring Ukraine, the first time in the war that a drone had hit a densely populated area in Romania and caused injuries. The incident in Romania, also a member of the European Union, was likely to increase tensions on Nato’s eastern flank at a time when Ukraine’s al...
