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The liquidators of China Evergrande Group are seeking 57 billion yuan (US$8.4 billion) from three PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) entities in one of the largest corporate lawsuit claims in Hong Kong, arguing the firm’s global coordinating arm assumed responsibility for audits linked to the collapsed developer’s accounting scandal. Evergrande’s liquidators, Tiffany Wong and Eddie Middleton of Alvarez ...
Four young men have pleaded guilty to rioting during the police siege of a university at the height of the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong, with a defence lawyer saying in mitigation that one of them later developed post-traumatic stress disorder after being tortured in “KK Park” – a notorious scam compound in Myanmar. The District Court on Monday heard guilty pleas from Cheung Chung-yi...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s whirlwind visit to the United Arab Emirates on Friday – the opening leg of a five-nation tour that will also take him through the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Italy – arrived at what analysts characterise as a moment of acute strategic opportunity. With oil prices spiralling amid the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran and the Middle East’s diplomatic la...
A flat-owning Shanghai grandpa who lives in a supermarket to avoid loneliness gave his home to a nanny he met at the shop in the face of his son’s disapproval. Qiangming, 78, has been living in the staff entrance of the supermarket in Shanghai for nearly a decade. He sleeps on a mat, rests in the supermarket’s dining area during the day and carries 50,000 yuan (US$7,400) cash in his pocket, plus a...
A flat-owning Shanghai grandpa who lives in a supermarket to avoid loneliness gave his home to a nanny he met at the shop in the face of his son’s disapproval. Qiangming, 78, has been living in the staff entrance of the supermarket in Shanghai for nearly a decade. He sleeps on a mat, rests in the supermarket’s dining area during the day and carries 50,000 yuan (US$7,400) cash in his pocket, plus a...
Baidu has reached a historic milestone as its AI businesses surged to become its primary revenue driver in the first quarter, despite a 2 per cent dip in overall income, the Chinese tech giant said on Monday. The company’s artificial intelligence-related businesses, including AI cloud, AI applications and AI marketing services, saw revenue grow to 13.6 billion yuan, a 49 per cent year-on-year incr...
Baidu has reached a historic milestone as its AI businesses surged to become its primary revenue driver in the first quarter, despite a 2 per cent dip in overall income, the Chinese tech giant said on Monday. The company’s artificial intelligence-related businesses, including AI cloud, AI applications and AI marketing services, saw revenue grow to 13.6 billion yuan, a 49 per cent year-on-year incr...
Hong Kong’s largest annual LGBTQ carnival has been cancelled for the second year in a row after failing to secure a venue and the relevant event licences, according to its organiser. Pink Dot HK announced on Monday that it was forced to cancel this year’s festival after property manager Link Reit pulled its offer to rent two venues to the advocacy group. The event was scheduled to be held at Stanl...
Iran has signalled “unprecedented” commitment to its ties with China by appointing a veteran of peace talks with the US as its emissary to Beijing, a move experts say also underscored China’s rise as a “third space” where Middle East powers could quietly negotiate. Tehran has made Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the country’s parliament, its special envoy to oversee the country’s relationship...
Hong Kong authorities have allocated HK$5 billion (US$638 million) in funding for efforts to safeguard national security, bringing the total amount earmarked for this purpose to HK$18 billion over the past five years, an official document has revealed. The South China Morning Post’s check on the government’s general revenue expenditure accounts for the financial year ending in March 2026, showed a...
Beijing has strongly criticised Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te for paying tribute to a figure from Japan’s colonial era in Taiwan. In a commentary published on Sunday, Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily accused Lai, from Taiwan’s independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party, of “forgetting his ancestors” and reaching a new low in “ingratiating himself with Japan”. The...
Beijing has slammed Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te for paying tribute to a former Japanese coloniser in Taiwan. In a commentary published on Sunday, the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily accused Lai, from the independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), of “forgetting his ancestors” and reaching a new low in “ingratiating himself with Japan”. The denunciation foll...
In South Korea, the clock is ticking on what threatens to become the most consequential labour dispute in recent history – and Seoul is running out of patience. With 50,000 workers at Samsung Electronics poised to walk off the job on Thursday in an 18-day strike, the government of President Lee Jae Myung finds itself cornered by a crisis it cannot afford to mishandle, with up to 100 trillion won (...
A rare Ebola outbreak that may have circulated undetected in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo for several weeks has exposed the difficulty of detecting deadly viruses in regions where malaria, typhoid and other fever-causing illnesses were common and health systems were stretched thin. About 350 suspected cases and 91 deaths have been reported in northeastern DR Congo, the country’s healt...
Chances of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim winning a fresh mandate look increasingly fraught, according to experts, as the unravelling of his coalition government gathered pace over the weekend amid threats of all-out war between allies and the defection of former stalwarts to a rival party. Anwar has presided over a period of relative political stability since his appointment as prime minister in Novemb...
Chances of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim winning a fresh mandate look increasingly fraught, experts say, as the unravelling of his coalition government picked up pace with threats of full-scale war between allies and the desertion by former stalwarts to another party over the weekend. Anwar has presided over a period of relative political stability since he was appointed prime minister in November 2022...
For years, mobile carriers have billed users by the gigabyte. Now, China’s telecoms giants are seeking to monetise the artificial intelligence boom by introducing a new unit of measurement to monthly bills: the AI token. On Sunday, China Telecom unveiled nationwide, token-based pricing packages aimed at a range of customers – from casual users to developers and businesses – according to informatio...
The Chinese University of Hong Kong has opened the city’s first full-stack interactive robotics lab, partnering with 24 tech firms, mainly from mainland China, to train talent and develop humanoid robots over the next five years. The Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab, established by CUHK’s Hong Kong Centre for Logistics Robotics under the government’s InnoHK initiative, has already introduced upgraded ver...
Chinese scientists landed on a disputed South China Sea reef over the weekend in the latest assertion of Beijing’s sovereignty claims. The uninhabited sandbank, Sandy Cay, has become a growing flashpoint following a series of encounters between Chinese and Philippine coastguard, military and fishing vessels. The Philippines said the Chinese-flagged research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 33 had been spott...
Chinese scientists landed on a disputed South China Sea reef over the weekend in the latest assertion of Beijing’s sovereignty claims. The uninhabited sandbank, Sandy Cay, has become a growing flashpoint following a series of encounters between Chinese and Philippine coastguard, military and fishing vessels. The Philippines said the Chinese-flagged research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 33 had been spott...
The thorny question of whether Britain should unwind a decade of estrangement from the European Union is resurfacing as the Labour Party starts to imagine a future beyond Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Two key figures have emerged as potential challengers after a series of political body blows that have left Starmer’s leadership in crisis, and the spectre of rejoining the EU was creeping back into t...
Secondary home prices in mainland China’s major cities rose in April, according to official data, offering further encouraging signs that the struggling property sector is bottoming out, analysts said. Used home prices in the first-tier cities rose, led by Shanghai’s 0.7 per cent increase on a monthly basis, followed by a rise of 0.4 per cent in Beijing, data released by the National Bureau of Sta...
Secondary home prices in mainland China’s major cities rose in April, according to official data, offering further encouraging signs that the struggling property sector is bottoming out, analysts said. Used home prices in the first-tier cities rose, led by Shanghai’s 0.7 per cent increase on a monthly basis, followed by a rise of 0.4 per cent in Beijing, data released by the National Bureau of Sta...
A Hong Kong court has ordered the confiscation of more than HK$674,000 (US$86,065) seized from three defendants in a landmark terrorism trial, finding the funds were gathered to support a plot to kill police during the 2019 anti-government protests. The High Court on Monday declared the money raised by the “Dragon Slaying Brigade” constituted terrorist property under the United Nations (Anti-Terro...
India may be the world’s most populous country, with 1.42 billion people and challenges like high youth unemployment, but powerful allies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are championing larger families to counter a declining fertility rate. Even though the United Nations projects India’s population would keep rising for about four decades, peaking at around 1.7 billion, some policymakers and Hind...
Hong Kong authorities should step up preventive measures and issue a travel alert to warn residents against visiting parts of central Africa as an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda threatens to worsen, an infectious disease expert has said. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. Soon after, the H...
Hong Kong authorities should step up preventive measures and issue a travel alert to warn residents against visiting parts of central Africa as an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda threatens to worsen, an infectious disease expert has said. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. Soon after, the H...
A Shanghai doctor has gone viral because he weighs 150kg, with some internet users jokingly asking whether they should follow such a plump person’s prescriptions. Chest surgeon Xiang Ruilong, who was born in the 1980s, works at Shanghai Yueyang Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine Hospital. Standing at 1.84m tall, he weighs in at 150kg, the Xinmin Evening News reporte...
Scientists in China have identified a new type of rare earths formation in the frigid northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin – a discovery that could challenge assumptions about how rare earths occur across the country. Unlike the clay-heavy deposits of southern China – which require chemical leaching to release the elements – the northern formations consist of loose sand and gravel form...
