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In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United Nations climate projections. The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic that warms nearly 1.66 degrees Celsius (3 Fahrenheit) between now and 2030 and a dan...
Hong Kong’s civil servants could receive salary increases of up to 4.12 per cent this year, according to preliminary results from a pay trend survey, subject to final approval by the Executive Council. The findings, based on data from 104 private companies and released on Thursday by the government, indicate pay increases of 4.12 per cent for senior civil servants, 2.64 per cent for middle-ranking...
Hong Kong civil servants could receive a salary rise of up to 4.12 per cent this year, according to preliminary pay trend survey results, subject to final approval by the Executive Council. The survey findings, based on data from 104 private companies and released on Thursday, suggest pay increases of 4.12 per cent for senior civil servants, 2.64 per cent for middle-ranking staff and 1.17 per cent...
Vietnam’s globetrotting leader To Lam began his first trip to Thailand with trade and security talks dominating the agenda, as well as a symbolic visit to the former home of Ho Chi Minh, the founder of modern Vietnam who once lived in the northeast of the kingdom. To Lam, the president and general secretary of the Communist Party, is seen by many as the country’s most powerful leader since the era...
The global energy crisis stemming from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has added complexity to already competitive China-India maritime relations. The bottleneck in the Gulf has disrupted the provision of vital supplies of oil, gas and fertilisers to Asia, underscoring the fragility of global supply chains and the significance of trade chokepoints. Amid uncertainty over the Strait of...
Israel’s military on Wednesday declared a new swathe of southern Lebanon as a combat zone and said residents in the area should move north, warning it would act “with great force” against Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in the zone. The military’s statement, posted on X, appeared to signal further escalation after more than 120 strikes on Tuesday hit Lebanon’s south and east, despite a ceasefire a...
The US Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused US President Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The probe is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to two civil lawsuits that she won against Trump – one tied to her allegations that he sexually abused ...
Global investors’ appetite for Chinese equities, companies and assets continues to rise owing to rapid technological advancements and low valuations in the world’s second-largest economy, according to JPMorgan Chase. Kwang Kam Shing, chairwoman for North Asia at the biggest US bank, said that foreign investment in Hong Kong and mainland China remained at a low level historically, and investors wer...
Scientists have discovered a thriving and previously unknown ecosystem in the planet’s deepest ocean trenches, feeding on organic debris from above. At those depths the pressure is enough to crush a submarine, and combined with perpetual darkness and temperatures near freezing, it makes the deepest reaches of the oceans among the least explored places on Earth. Until now, researchers believed that...
Hong Kong authorities have suspended a drainage replacement project in Kowloon after a contractor’s worker died in an industrial accident. The worker, 68, was struck by an electric chain hoist at a site on Yen Chow Street in Sham Shui Po on Wednesday afternoon. He was taken to Princess Margaret Hospital in critical condition and later died at about 11.30pm. A government spokesman said on Thursday ...
It is very often said that the common law is one of Hong Kong’s greatest assets. It provides us with a corpus of law which shares common origins with those of many established jurisdictions. It enables conversations to take place between our legal professionals and with our counterparts elsewhere. As the only common law jurisdiction with both Chinese and English as official languages used in court...
A partnership between Japan Airlines and a space start-up marks the first step for the carrier to explore diversification beyond Earth-bound aviation, potentially boosting Japan’s ambition to expand its footprint on the moon. The airline is teaming up with ispace to transport items of “precious cultural heritage and human activities” via a lander craft to the moon and protect them from the effects...
Hong Kong’s public housing conversation is often dominated by a single anxious question: how long do you have to wait for a home? Today, the answer is starting to change. The average waiting time for a general applicant for subsidised public rental housing has fallen to 4.7 years, a shift that feels small on paper but enormous for the families living it. The real transformation runs deeper than th...
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard targeted a US airbase on Thursday after the US military carried out what a Washington official said were strikes on an Iranian drone operation near the Strait of Hormuz, hours after US President Donald Trump rejected a report he was close to a compromise deal with Tehran. The escalation in hostilities highlighted threats to the tenuous ceasefire between the US and Iran t...
Kuwait said it faced a missile and drone attack on Thursday as the shaky ceasefire in the Iran war was again challenged after the United States conducted strikes targeting Iran and Tehran said it responded with an attack of its own. Kuwait’s military made the announcement, without providing further details on what had been targeted. Kuwait repeatedly came under fire from Iran and Iranian-backed Sh...
The US military carried out new strikes overnight in Iran targeting a military site and shooting down four Iranian one-way attack drones that posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz, a US official said on Wednesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the military site that was struck was an Iranian ground control station in Iran’s Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a f...
Chinese energy companies are poised to play an important role in Southeast Asia’s ambitious green transition plans, which will see countries across the region integrate their power grids, according to a senior Singaporean official. The strategy could eventually lead to a cross-regional network running all the way from Singapore to southern China via nations including Malaysia and Thailand, accordi...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] In 2026, China embarks on its 15th Five-Year Plan. At this critical juncture, as changes unseen in a century accelerate worldwide and the global innovation landscape is being profoundly reshaped, Hong Kong is presented with a historic opportunity to develop into an international innovation and technology centre. This alig...
A refund initiative launched by a famous barbecue restaurant chain in China has drawn significant attention on mainland social media, triggering a debate about a culture of valuing the feelings of customers. At the beginning of May, Very Long Ago Lamb Skewers, which has 142 directly managed outlets across the country, contacted customers who ate at 48,000 tables at 24 restaurants in February. The ...
For more than a decade, Jeffrey Ongoco has watched much of his daughter’s childhood unfold through a screen. The 46-year-old, who works as a document controller for a construction company in Doha, left the Philippines in 2007 for a job in Saudi Arabia before moving to Qatar in 2010. He and his wife work in Doha to support their 16-year-old daughter, who has lived in the Philippines since infancy, ...
Hong Kong is an excellent option for Central Asian companies considering secondary listings to raise funds for expansion due to its deep liquidity, as the city eyes rapidly growing markets in the region, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) CEO Bonnie Chan Yiting has said. Chan, who will join a high-level delegation led by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in early J...
Jill Biden feared her husband was having a stroke as she watched then US President Joe Biden stumble through a disastrous debate performance that led to the end of his 2024 re-election campaign, the former first lady said in a recent interview. “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told CBS News in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday...
Jill Biden feared her husband was having a stroke as she watched then US President Joe Biden stumble through a disastrous debate performance that led to the end of his 2024 re-election campaign, the former first lady said in a recent interview. “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told CBS News in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday...
Months of disruption through the Strait of Hormuz have prompted a rethink of global supply chains, with South Korea now following China in pushing to commercialise the Arctic shipping route to Europe. South Korea aimed to open a regular route through the waters by 2030, following a trial voyage set to debut later this year, according to a broader maritime development plan released on Tuesday by Se...
Norway will open talks with France on joining its nuclear umbrella, French President Emmanuel Macron and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Wednesday, reflecting growing European concerns about relying on the US for security. The move signals a shift by Norway, long a staunch Atlanticist that has relied heavily on Nato and the US nuclear umbrella, towards closer defence cooperat...
Central Asia is tilting more decisively towards China as geopolitical uncertainty deepens, with Beijing’s expanding influence recasting the former Soviet states’ strategic orientation. In the first of a three-part series, Laura Zhou looks at how vulnerabilities laid bare by the Iran war might make the region look to China for water security. The US-Israel war on Iran has crippled global supply cha...
Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew once offered a striking observation on the nature of American power, wrote Harvard professor Joseph Nye in 2011. China, Lee argued, could draw upon its massive population but the United States possessed a deeper structural advantage: the ability to attract and recombine global talent within an unusually open, diverse and creative ecosystem. America’...
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to threaten to attack ally Oman if it sides with Iran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said Oman must “behave” or he would “blow them up”, when he was asked if he would accept a short-term deal to allow Iran and the Gulf state to control the waterway. “No, the strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump told reporters during a cabinet m...
The personal assistant who injected Friends star Matthew Perry with a fatal dose of the hallucinogenic drug ketamine was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison on Wednesday, bringing to a close the prosecution of five people who admitted to playing roles in the actor’s death. Judge Sherilyn Garnett delivered the sentence for Kenneth Iwamasa, the person who found Perry floating face down and ...
China’s military said on Wednesday that it had used measures including electronic interference to drive away a Dutch warship near the disputed Paracel Islands, and in a rare move accused the Dutch navy of triggering “miscalculation”. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Southern Theatre Command, which oversees the South China Sea, said in a post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday evening ...
