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Capital from the Gulf is showing signs of flowing into Asia, Hong Kong’s finance chief has said, as bilateral trade between the region and the city rose by 35 per cent year on year in the first five months of 2026. In his weekly blog on Sunday, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said Hong Kong and the Middle East had deepened ties in the areas of the economy, trade, finance, innovation and techno...
Capital from the Gulf region is showing signs of flowing into Asia, according to Hong Kong’s finance chief, as bilateral trade between the Middle East and the city rose 35 per cent in the first five months of the year. In his weekly blog on Sunday, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said Hong Kong and the Middle East had deepened ties in the areas of the economy, trade, finance, innovation and te...
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who as ruler of Qatar transformed the tiny Gulf nation into a global player in diplomacy, media and investment, and then shattered tradition by voluntarily turning over power to his son, has died, state media reported. He was 74. The state-run Qatar News Agency reported his death. It offered no cause. Sheikh Hamad, who stepped down in June 2013 after 18 years as ...
As the car bounces along a rural Thai road, a baby just a few months old watches the emerald green countryside rush by from Nicha’s* lap, oblivious to the countdown that has already begun. Soon the child will be handed over to her father to be raised in China by grandparents whose own hopes of a larger family were curtailed by decades of state population control. Nicha may never see the baby she g...
For Cai, a trader in Shenzhen’s vast Huaqiangbei electronics hub, the business of assembling computers for gamers and corporate clients has suddenly become dramatically more expensive. The price of memory products in Huaqiangbei has tripled over the past year amid the global artificial intelligence boom – and the spike has hit the world’s largest wholesale electronics market hard. “Right now, memo...
After 16 years, Li Zhijian and his wife Peng Hongying have finally found a measure of closure in their long pursuit of justice over a medical blunder that left their son paralysed for life in Hong Kong. But the mainland Chinese couple said their fight for accountability was far from over, despite a ruling by the city’s medical watchdog that found a paediatrician guilty of professional misconduct i...
Japan’s Hayabusa2 fly-by of Torifune marks a leap in asteroid defence, showcasing the country’s growing space prowess and “goodwill science” role vital for protecting Earth from cosmic threats. The space probe, named after the Peregrine falcon in Japanese, successfully flew within 800 metres (0.5 miles) of the asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on July 5. JAXA said Hayabu...
Rail and air services began returning to normal across large areas of eastern China on Sunday as Typhoon Bavi weakened and travelled inland away from some of the country’s largest cities. As of 5pm on Sunday, the storm was over Wuhu city in the central province of Anhui, according to the National Meteorological Centre. Bavi, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm earlier in the day, was slo...
Typhoon Bavi made landfall in eastern China on Saturday night, the second major storm to hit the country in a week, causing thousands of flight and train cancellations while more than 2.4 million people were evacuated from areas in the path of the storm. More than 2,800 flights were likely to be cancelled by Chinese airlines as of 8pm on Saturday, the state news agency Xinhua reported. Shanghai’s ...
Typhoon Bavi made landfall in eastern China on Saturday night, the second major storm to hit the country in a week, causing thousands of flight and train cancellations while more than 2.4 million people were evacuated from areas in the path of the storm. More than 2,800 flights were likely to be cancelled by Chinese airlines as of 8pm on Saturday, the state news agency Xinhua reported. Shanghai’s ...
For many K-pop fans in South Korea, the hunt for concert tickets has turned into a high-stakes battle, one where logging on early is no longer enough and ordinary fans find themselves outmatched by organised resellers, bots and shadowy workarounds that can send prices soaring far beyond face value. Previous solutions have failed to rein in the problem, but the government is hoping that the threat ...
Taiwan’s volunteer force has recorded an unexpected increase of more than 5,000 personnel over the past year despite the island’s worsening demographic decline. However, lawmakers and military analysts say the growth is driven more by government pay rises than by any apparent shift in young people’s attitudes towards military service. The figures, released by the defence ministry this week, brough...
Japan has found a new export industry and it doesn’t come off an assembly line. It arrives by plane, spends freely and is, increasingly, what Tokyo is banking its economic future on. Last year, 42.7 million foreign visitors arrived in the country, a record that shattered the previous year’s high by nearly 16 per cent. Now Tokyo wants to turn that surge into something more lasting: a permanent pill...
Last month, China Eastern ordered 25 A330neo jets from Airbus, which come at a catalogue price of US$9.35 billion. The airline, which operates the inaugural commercial routes of the C919, China’s home-grown passenger jet, had placed another Airbus order just three months earlier. Why is this major Chinese airline transferring billions to a European company China’s government is trying to supplant?...
A legal ruling in China holding three individuals liable for the death of a friend following overnight drinking and gaming has ignited widespread online discussion. Three men in Urumqi, in northwestern China, were ordered by the court to compensate their friend’s family a total of over 100,000 yuan (US$15,000), after he died partying with them all night. The man, surnamed Gao, played mahjong with ...
Youth suicide cases confirmed by Hong Kong Coroner’s Court reached a decade-high last year, despite a 10 per cent overall decline across the population to 1,019. According to the annual coroners’ report published last month, suicide cases confirmed by the court declined across almost all age groups, except for those aged between 10 and 19. Last year, 46 adolescents aged 10 to 19 were reported to h...
Iran said the Strait of Hormuz was closed on Sunday while the United States insisted it remained open, after the confrontation over the vital waterway again sparked US and Iranian strikes. The strait, essential to global oil and gas supplies, has become a central point of contention between the two foes, repeatedly leading to exchanges of fire despite an agreement aimed at ending the Middle East w...
The US military launched strikes on Iran after it struck a container ship on Sunday, while Tehran said it had again closed the Strait of Hormuz and some Gulf states came under attack. A series of attacks between the US and Iran over the past several days led President Donald Trump to declare the end of a ceasefire meant to halt the fighting that the US and Israel began on February 28, though Trump...
The US military launched strikes on Iran after it struck a container ship on Sunday, while Tehran said it had again closed the Strait of Hormuz and some Gulf states came under attack. A series of attacks between the US and Iran over the past several days led President Donald Trump to declare the end of a ceasefire meant to halt the fighting that the US and Israel began on February 28, though Trump...
Iran on Sunday said it closed the Strait of Hormuz after a vessel travelled on an unapproved route and was struck, warning that any retaliation over the incident would be met with a “severe response”. “A vessel that had jeopardised maritime security by switching off its systems was struck and brought to a halt,” the Navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement, without giv...
Barisan Nasional’s (BN) sweeping win in Johor is expected to embolden it within Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government while forcing Pakatan Harapan (PH) into a difficult postmortem over its waning appeal on the ground. The Election Commission announced BN’s victory of 48 seats, out of 56 up for grabs, with PH managing only eight. BN’s result was better than the 40 seats it secu...
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Khushboo Razdan looks at how books shape public perceptions and inspire lifelong connections between the US and China even as their ...
Like many people outside the United States, I admire much of what it represents: open debate, strong institutions, energetic politics and the belief that public power should be restrained by rules. That is why watching the US today is so extraordinary. Consider US President Donald Trump’s meme coin. Nearly a million accounts that bought the $TRUMP coin have lost money, according to a report in The...
Taylor Swift shelled out six figures to cover the cost of NYPD officers and other city resources required to protect her massive Madison Square Garden wedding to Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce earlier this month, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani revealed. The Grammy winner “has paid already the cost of the permit that was lodged, which was over US$160,000 for that event and for the response t...
Taylor Swift shelled out six figures to cover the cost of NYPD officers and other city resources required to protect her massive Madison Square Garden wedding to Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce earlier this month, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani revealed. The Grammy winner “has paid already the cost of the permit that was lodged, which was over US$160,000 for that event and for the response t...
Shortly before US President Donald Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him. It was not the first such warning. US law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war...
A runner was gored in the face and many more were fortunate to not be seriously injured during a chaotic bull run at Spain’s San Fermin festival on Saturday. The six bulls and accompanying steers charged through crowds of thrill-seekers who packed the narrow street course in Pamplona. The huge animals knocked down bodies to the cobblestones, and stumbling runners caused several pile-ups during the...
US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit this week that he cast as an unfiltered look at the human toll of Israeli occupation as he weighs a 2028 presidential run. Speaking with reporters on Thursday in a Palestinian village, Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles a day earlier w...
