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Former Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Officer Leon Black told Congress he paid US$21 million to a woman he accused of blackmailing and extorting him. The billionaire investor said during a June 26 interview with the US House Oversight Committee that he paid the money to the woman, with whom he had had an affair, after she demanded US$100 million because he “ruined her life”. Black’s appe...
In Iran war news with major US political implications, two US soldiers were killed and several wounded by an Iranian drone, the Pentagon announced on Saturday. The tragedy, the first US combat deaths in months, came as US President Donald Trump has tried to downplay or distract attention from the hugely unpopular war that he started in late February, as his polling numbers tank four months in adva...
Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman has reclassified crocodiles from wild animals to “captive-bred wildlife”, a move that clears the way for the reptiles to be used for security purposes, including to deter prison escapes. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – who reportedly proposed in December surrounding a prison for Palestinian detainees with crocodiles, a la...
The Canadian military was preparing on Saturday to evacuate a remote community of 600 people threatened by forest wildfires that have spread, choking smoke across a broad swathe of the United States. Federal Emergencies Minister Eleanor Olszewski said late on Friday that the armed forces would use aircraft to evacuate the inhabitants of Fort Hope in sparsely populated northwestern Ontario, where s...
An independent committee examining the causes of Hong Kong’s deadly Wang Fuk Court blaze will delay submitting its final report to late October, a month later than expected, as more time is needed to review documents, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source confirmed to the SCMP on Saturday that the judge-led panel’s final report was likely to be submitted to Chief Executive John Lee Ka...
The global AI race is no longer just about chips or models. Increasingly, it is also about data – namely, the language resources that feed and train them. Beijing has identified that layer as a new strategic frontier, accelerating the buildout of a national ecosystem of Chinese-language data for artificial intelligence (AI). The push covers everything from foundational text corpora and high-qualit...
Greater global cooperation and development-focused AI regulations are urgently needed to prevent a widening digital divide, scholars and international figures said at China’s premier AI conference on Saturday. The message aligned with a broader pitch on display at the annual World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, where Beijing is courting the Global South with an artificial intelligence package c...
Chinese social media accounts are profiting by hinting at the downfall of corrupt officials ahead of formal announcements, state media has warned, highlighting a “grey market” around Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign. The trend had created a new challenge for Chinese law enforcement, state-run journal Banyuetan reported on Friday. One tactic involves posting an official’s resume as a coded signal...
Authorities in India’s capital Delhi moved social activist Sonam Wangchuk to hospital against his will on Saturday, after his condition worsened on the 21st day of a hunger strike launched to demand the resignation of the federal education minister. Wangchuk, 59, had been fasting since June 28 in solidarity with India’s youth Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which is demanding Education Minister Dharm...
When devastating floods swept through Assam in northeastern India in 2018, the disaster quickly triggered a troubling question within New Delhi’s security corridors. As technology advances, could control over the weather become a tool of geopolitical pressure, or even a weapon? Much of the concern centred on neighbouring China. Assam’s then finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, publicly warned ab...
Hong Kong customs officers have arrested three men in connection with the seizure of 131kg (289lbs) of suspected ketamine worth about HK$51 million (US$6.5 million), disguised as sugar cubes and found in air cargo transported to the city. Chiu Kai-wing, a senior investigator with the Customs and Excise Department’s drug investigation bureau, said on Saturday that officers had intercepted the air c...
Some residents left homeless by Hong Kong’s deadliest inferno in decades have called for merging the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit (ICU) with the Buildings Department after a public inquiry revealed communication failures between them. In recommendations submitted to the independent committee investigating the Wang Fuk Court fire, which were released on Saturday, legal representatives...
Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), Hong Kong’s largest developer by market capitalisation, has sold out the first batch of units at its Garden Regency project in the New Territories on Saturday, according to agents. By 3.30pm, all 138 flats the developer had launched in the Kam Tin North project in Yuen Long had found buyers, the agents said. The launch of the three-tower development of 566 units mar...
Alibaba Group Holding’s chip design unit, T-Head, has announced that it will open-source its proprietary software stack, marking its latest effort to streamline developer operations and challenge the dominance of American chip giant Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem. At the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Saturday, T-Head announced that it was making the full technical stack of SAIL – the foundati...
An independent inquiry into Hong Kong’s deadly Tai Po fire has concluded after examining more than 1 million files and hearing from 80 witnesses across 30 public sessions, uncovering the causes of the blaze that killed 168 people. The panel, chaired by Justice David Lok Kai-hong, wrapped up its hearings on Friday after proceedings that began on March 19. The inquiry examined evidence and testimony...
India’s first privately built orbital rocket took its maiden flight on Saturday, its company said, marking a significant step for the South Asian giant as it eyes a bigger slice of the global space economy. The Vikram-1 rocket, built by Skyroot Aerospace and designed to carry small satellites into low-Earth orbit, took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota amid loud cheers. “Hello...
Indonesia is pushing ahead to transform the holiday island of Bali into an international financial centre, with its parliament set to debate new laws this week while a key conference set out targets and cited models such as Hong Kong as an example. Minister of Investment and Downstream Industry Rosan Roeslani, who heads state-owned sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia, said the financial cent...
In Abidjan, the commercial capital and economic engine of Ivory Coast, the extent of Chinese infrastructure development is a permanent feature of the transport and trade networks. This includes the Alassane Ouattara Bridge, commonly known as the Cocody Bridge, which links the affluent eastern district of Cocody to the business centre of Plateau. The expansion of the Port of Abidjan’s second contai...
The Hong Kong government has indicated that it is unlikely to hold a by-election to fill the vacancy left by former lawmaker William Wong Kam-fai’s resignation over his drink-driving and hit-and-run case, citing time constraints and concerns about cost-effectiveness. Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Janice Tse Siu-wa also said on Saturday that the government had received 2,500 sub...
It turns out it isn’t just office jobs people should be worried about AI taking, some athletes might want to watch their backs too. In a scene that could have come from the Terminator film franchise, two robots battled it out in an MMA fight in Shenzhen this week, leaving social media users stunned and one of the two combatants without a head. Dubbed the robot version of the UFC, the Ultimate Robo...
A Hongkonger has died in a traffic accident in New Zealand, marking at least the second fatal crash involving city residents in the country this year. The Chinese consulate in Queenstown on Thursday said that a “serious traffic accident” had occurred a day earlier along Crown Range Road near the South Island city in which a Hongkonger died. “Our consulate is deeply saddened by the loss and has act...
Hong Kong authorities plan to invite ride-hailing platforms to apply for operator licences as early as next month and will begin approving them in batches from the end of November, the city’s transport minister has said. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan laid down the timeline on Thursday as lawmakers completed the negative vetting process to approve the subsidiary legislation for t...
Hong Kong authorities plan to invite ride-hailing platforms to apply for operator licences as early as next month and will begin approving them in batches from the end of November, the city’s transport minister has said. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan laid down the timeline on Thursday as lawmakers completed the negative vetting process to approve the subsidiary legislation for t...
This article was first published on July 17, 1986. Cafe de Coral the live wire in quiet market by John Mulcahy Fast-food counter Cafe de Coral hit the boards yesterday (July 16, 1986), trading up to $1.35 and recording the biggest volume of the day. Although 16.6 million Cafe de Coral shares traded, at a total value of $22.08 million, this was about all the excitement the market could muster, as i...
A boom in China’s new drug research and development is driving laboratory monkey prices back to coronavirus pandemic-era highs, forcing some researchers to halt their studies. According to Guo Xiangyu, a scientist at Jinan University in Guangzhou whose research focuses on developing non-human primate models for major brain diseases, laboratory monkey prices have risen steadily since Chinese New Ye...
A group of Chinese travellers in South Korea successfully brought a runaway coach under control after the driver lost consciousness while driving, triggering heated discussions online. On Chinese social media, several passengers shared what they experienced on the limousine to Incheon International Airport in the afternoon of July 11. As the coach with 10 to 20 passengers headed towards the expres...
The US will begin charging 25 per cent tariff on imports of certain goods from Brazil following an investigation alleging that the country engaged in unfair trade practices. The year-long inquiry “found a number of Brazil’s practices to be unreasonable and discriminatory, restricting the competitive position of American farmers, workers, innovators, and exporters,” the Office of the US Trade Repre...
The UN warned on Thursday that more than 500 people were feared dead following reports of two large shipwrecks off Myanmar since late June. The UN’s International Organization for Migration and its refugee agency UNHCR voiced alarm in a joint statement at reports “that two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days”. Preliminary information indica...
Africa’s exports to China have surged since Beijing expanded its zero-tariff policy across the continent in May, as customs data showed signs of emerging trade links in a range of new sectors alongside traditional categories such as critical minerals. China’s imports from Africa soared by 21.1 per cent and 40.2 per cent year on year in May and June, respectively – outpacing the overall growth in C...
