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China will improve access to healthcare, education and other public services for the nation’s 357 million-plus migrant workers, potentially boosting urban living standards and stimulating consumer spending. Local governments will end their restrictions on employee social security and expand access to public schools for the children of migrants, according to an announcement on Friday by the State C...
China will improve access to healthcare, education and other public services for the nation’s 357 million-plus migrant workers, potentially boosting urban living standards and stimulating consumer spending. Local governments will end their restrictions on employee social security and expand access to public schools for the children of migrants, according to an announcement on Friday by the State C...
In a cluster of villages in Pakistan’s largely rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shiite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad. They are among potentially thousands of Shi’ites deported from the UAE to Pakistan during the Iran war, raising alarm in Pakistan’s Shiite community and prompting Human Right...
China is looking to give every humanoid manufactured in the country a digital identity, as it seeks promote growth in the rapidly growing sector through establishing industry standards and strengthening regulation. The country launched a national initiative on Friday, dubbed the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform, to assign human-shaped and artificial intelligence-driven bipedal r...
The desperate search for seven villagers in Laos prospecting for gold who became trapped deep inside a flooded cave entered a sixth day on Monday, with the incident highlighting how surging prices have sparked a rush for the precious metal despite risks in unstable hillside mines. Thai cave rescue teams have joined the mission at the cave in central Xaysomboun province, posting harrowing images on...
China was the second-largest financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping mission after the US last year, with its share rising “substantially” as geopolitical tensions increasingly paralysed multilateral peace operations, according to a Swedish think tank. In a report on multilateral peace operations in 2025 released on Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said tha...
Former chairman of Seven & i Holdings Toshifumi Suzuki, credited for the global success of 7-Eleven convenience stores, had died at the age of 93, according to the company. Suzuki - known as the “father of the convenience store” in Japan - died due to heart failure on May 18, the company said in a statement on Monday. “We would like to express our deepest gratitude for the kindness shown to him du...
Hong Kong police have arrested a bus driver after his double-decker collided with a highway maintenance vehicle on Monday, injuring 22 people. The Transport Department said it had launched an investigation and expressed deep concern over the crash on the Tsing Kwai Highway, requesting detailed reports from the franchised bus company involved and the Tsing Ma Control Area operator. The bus driver, ...
Twenty-one people were injured on Monday afternoon after a double-decker bus collided with a highway maintenance escort vehicle on Hong Kong’s Tsing Kwai Highway. The Transport Department said it had launched an investigation and expressed deep concern over the incident, requesting detailed reports from the involved franchised bus company and the Tsing Ma Control Area operator. Police received a r...
Twenty-one people were injured on Monday afternoon after a double-decker bus collided with a highway maintenance vehicle on Hong Kong’s Tsing Kwai Highway. Police received a report at 2.05pm that a KMB route 960 double-decker bus, travelling from Wan Chai to Tuen Mun, collided with a maintenance truck equipped with a flashing arrow sign near Princess Margaret Hospital. A dashcam video circulating ...
At least 24 people were injured on Monday afternoon after a double-decker bus collided with a highway maintenance vehicle on Hong Kong’s Tsing Kwai Highway. Police received a report at 2.05pm that a KMB route 960 double-decker bus, travelling from Wan Chai to Tuen Mun, collided with a maintenance truck equipped with a flashing arrow sign near Princess Margaret Hospital. The force said the crash le...
A dispute over where churches and temples can operate in Malaysia’s richest state has become an awkward political test for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s ruling coalition, which came to power promising to protect the country’s multiracial and multi-faith society. The row centres on planning guidelines in Selangor, a wealthy and densely populated state surrounding Kuala Lumpur, that critics say cou...
Around 20 people were injured at a luxury shopping complex in the Japanese capital of Tokyo on Monday after a man sprayed a substance inside, police and fire department officials said. Tokyo police spokesman Yusuke Koide said that a man sprayed a substance at an ATM on the ground floor of the building, while a local fire department official said “around 20 people were injured” after a report of a ...
A viral video of a blind woman on a tactile pavement being hit by an electric bike, which turned out to be staged, has sparked a wave of public anger in China. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times online. It has also raised questions about similar scams involving the visually impaired and fears that it could diminish public’s trust in the blind community, Shangyou News reported. I...
The annual haj pilgrimage, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, officially began on Monday. More than 1.5 million pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia from outside the country, Saleh bin Saad Al-Murabba, commander of the haj passport forces, said on Friday. The faithful have been pouring into the country for the haj against the backdrop of a tenuous ceasefire in the Iran war and related regional ten...
A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative country. Siranudh Scott, a fourth-generation member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his older brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing...
We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. 82 killed in China’s worst coal mine accident for more than a decade 2. Why Bangladesh could raise Indian red flags by buying a China-Pakistan fighter jet 3. Screams as 10 hurt in ‘drop tower’ turb...
Singapore train operator SMRT will be stepping up pest control measures at its stations and depots after a video circulating online showed a rat on one of its trains. In the video posted on social media on Saturday, a rat is seen scurrying around the cabin of a train as two people attempt to corner it. People are also seen lifting their legs to avoid it as it scurries past them. “SMRT is aware of ...
A coalition of major EU member states is pushing Brussels towards a much tougher trade regime aimed at combating Chinese-style industrial overcapacity, including faster emergency tariffs, broader safeguards and new anti-circumvention powers. A paper signed by Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and Lithuania days before a major China-focused debate in Brussels said the bloc must respond more agg...
Hong Kong’s note-issuing banks are replacing burnt cash for Wang Fuk Court residents, following emergency measures introduced by the city’s Monetary Authority and lenders to support those affected by last November’s devastating fire at the Tai Po estate. The extent of the residents’ financial losses came into the spotlight as they returned to the site to collect their belongings during a 15-day go...
Three people were killed and one was injured in an accident during lifeboat maintenance work at a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel operated by Malaysian state energy firm Petronas on Sunday, the firm said. Petronas, or Petroliam Nasional Berhad, said in a statement on Monday the incident occurred around 12.50pm at FSO Sepat off Terengganu state on the east coast of Peninsular Malay...
For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has preached a mantra of peace and stability in the Middle East through the destruction of Iran’s Islamic Republic. The obliteration of the ayatollahs, he prophesied, would lead to the normalisation of relations between Israel and the wider Arab-Islamic world – with Israel emerging as the Middle East’s dominant power and indispensable security...
Each morning, people in Thailand wake up to the latest viral videos on social media of drunken punch-ups, thefts, scams or acts of public indecency committed by some foreign tourists. After months of warnings, Thailand on May 19 announced the cancellation of its 60-day visa-free entry rules for 93 countries and territories in a bid to curb crime, antisocial behaviour and abuse of the visa privileg...
Huawei Technologies has unveiled a new scaling law and chip architecture intended to deliver transistor performance equivalent to a 1.4-nanometre process node – representing the leading edge of semiconductor development – in a few years without relying on advances in lithography tools. The move represents a significant step by the Chinese tech giant to establish a self-reliant semiconductor ecosys...
In the global shift towards carbon-neutral mobility, a striking role reversal is taking shape on the pavements of the world’s most populous cities. While geopolitical analysts focus on the high-altitude rhetoric of the Xi-Trump summit in Beijing, a more profound urban reality is unfolding at eye level. Broadcasting live from a teeming Beijing intersection, Fox News anchor Bret Baier recently captu...
Singapore’s economy expanded faster than expected in the first quarter as the global artificial-intelligence boom lifted the nation’s manufacturing and services, offsetting the drag from higher crude prices. Gross domestic product grew a seasonally adjusted 1 per cent in the three months through March from the previous quarter, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said on Monday. That is well ...
XCMG Group, mainland China’s largest construction machinery maker, aims to achieve annual overseas sales of 100 billion yuan (US$14.7 billion), luring more international clients by turning its excavators, cranes and specialised vehicles greener and more automated. Yang Dongsheng, chairman of the state-owned machinery giant, told reporters in a media briefing last week that the target would be achi...
Hong Kong’s airport is set for a shift in volume this summer after airlines quietly swapped jet sizes and reduced scheduled flights to manage costs amid a global fuel crisis and following a jump in economy passenger fares to Europe. Some airlines told the South China Morning Post they would operate all scheduled flights beyond June after initial consolidation efforts to offset higher jet fuel pric...
A single drop of blood could soon be used to screen for early-stage cancer, according to Wen Liaoyong of Westlake University in Hangzhou. Wen’s team has compressed what was once a refrigerator-sized detection system into something that fits in your hand – and boosted accuracy to about 10,000 times that of conventional methods. The findings were published in the journal Nature Photonics on May 13. ...
Xiaomi is betting on artificial intelligence to future-proof its sprawling hardware empire, pouring massive resources into open-source models to ensure its next generation of smartphones and electric vehicles (EVs) does not get left behind in an AI-driven market. The Beijing-based firm’s latest AI model, MiMo-V2.5-Pro, introduced last month, was ranked by third-party benchmark platform Artificial ...
