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Australia and Vanuatu signed a sweeping economic and security agreement on Monday that bars the establishment of any foreign military base on the Pacific island. Vanuatu is at the centre of strategic rivalry between China and US allies in the South Pacific, and Australia has expressed concern that Beijing is seeking a permanent security presence in the region. The agreement commits Australia to gr...
Australia and Vanuatu signed a sweeping economic and security agreement on Monday that bars the establishment of any foreign military base on the Pacific island. Vanuatu is at the centre of strategic rivalry between China and US allies in the South Pacific, and Australia has expressed concern that Beijing is seeking a permanent security presence in the region. The agreement commits Australia to gr...
She has a young woman’s voice, a friendly face and a police chief’s badge. Her name is “AIko” and she may be Japan’s most unconventional weapon in a war against fraud that cost the country a record US$2 billion last year. AIko – a blend of the abbreviation for artificial intelligence and “ko”, the Japanese feminine name suffix – made her public debut in late May on Osaka Prefectural Police’s YouTu...
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. China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes viral after crowdfunding success 2. Why Malaysia’s tourism boom lives and dies on a Chinese app 3. As Europe sizzles amid extreme heat, the hunt for Ch...
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. China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes viral after crowdfunding success 2. Why Malaysia’s tourism boom lives and dies on a Chinese app 3. As Europe sizzles amid extreme heat, the hunt for Ch...
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. China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes viral after crowdfunding success 2. Why Malaysia’s tourism boom lives and dies on a Chinese app 3. As Europe sizzles amid extreme heat, the hunt for Ch...
As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong will step up building renovation inspections and consider spot checks following lessons from the deadly Wang Fuk Court blaze, the housing minister has said in her first rem...
As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong will step up building renovation inspections and consider spot checks following lessons from the deadly Wang Fuk Court blaze, the housing minister has said in her first rem...
Ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return to Bangladesh this year, brushing aside a death sentence handed down in absentia and denouncing the ruling as “illegal, unconstitutional and politically motivated”. Hasina, 78, who fled to India after a student-led uprising ousted her government in August 2024, said in an interview with Indian broadcaster NDTV that she was undeterre...
China has broken ground on what developers say is the country’s first production line for AI-assisted personalised tumour vaccines, raising hopes for millions of new cancer patients every year – a disease that ranks as the nation’s second-leading cause of death. By October, Beijing-based Likang Life Sciences is expected to complete a new drug research and manufacturing centre in the Beijing Econom...
The next frontier of artificial intelligence will be agents that can perform “economically valuable” work across a broad range of real-world domains, according to Dawn Song, Meta Platforms’ new vice-president of AI research. “The goal is not to replace humans,” Song told the South China Morning Post last week on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Dalian, also known as Summer Davos, days ...
A worker has died and another has been injured after an excavator fell on its side at a Hong Kong construction site. Police said on Monday that they received a report at 9.42am that an industrial accident had occurred on the site on Liberty Avenue in Ho Man Tin. A union chief said both workers were rushed to hospital, with one of them later certified dead. The Labour Department said it was investi...
A worker has died and another has been left unconscious after a construction vehicle fell on its side at a Hong Kong construction site. Police said on Monday that they received a report at 9.42am that an industrial accident had occurred on the site on Liberty Avenue in Ho Man Tin. The force said at least one worker had become trapped when the excavator fell on its side. One worker was certified de...
A worker has died and another has been left unconscious after a construction vehicle fell on its side at a Hong Kong construction site. Police said on Monday that they received a report at 9.42am that an industrial accident had occurred on the site on Liberty Avenue in Ho Man Tin. The force said at least one worker had become trapped when the vehicle fell on its side. One worker was certified dead...
A worker has died and another has been left unconscious at a Hong Kong construction site after a crane fell on its side. Police said on Monday that they received a report at 9.42am that an industrial accident had occurred on a site on Liberty Avenue in Ho Man Tin. The force said at least one worker had become trapped when the crane fell on its side. One worker was certified dead on scene, while an...
People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since the war in Iran started. Top power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10 per cent since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12 per cent of monthly income o...
The Ministry of Commerce said on Monday that to deter Japan’s “remilitarisation” and its attempts to “acquire nuclear weapons”, it has added 20 Japanese entities “involved in enhancing Japan’s military capabilities” to an export-control list. Twenty Japanese entities have also been added to a separate watch list. The moves were made to safeguard China’s national security and interests and to fulfi...
As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong’s first rectified subdivided home is expected to be approved by authorities in the next two months, while about 19,000 flats have already registered for the renovation poli...
European Union leaders had a week to bask in their rare, relatively united stance on China policy before news broke to remind them of the urgency of their task: German car giant Volkswagen was reportedly planning up to 100,000 job cuts in the face of cutthroat Chinese competition. Seven days previously at a European Council summit in Brussels, leaders from the EU’s 27 member states had instructed ...
Earlier this year, a screenshot of a domestic airfare went viral in the Philippines for all the wrong reasons. The flight was from Manila to Batanes, the country’s remote northern tip. The price: 27,000 pesos (US$440) – enough to fly to Taipei or Hanoi, check into a decent hotel and still have money for dinner. That disconnect sits awkwardly alongside Manila’s latest effort to rev up domestic trav...
Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist Party’s rule, according to a new analysis released on Monday by a human rights group. The 88 Project, which focuses on rights issues in Vietnam, documented 56 such arrests last year, the third consecutive year of increases and double the number in 2022. ...
The public consultation for Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s last policy address of his current term is under way. Will he, for example, listen to the people about whether the baby bonus, one of the initiatives aimed at raising the birth rate and which is set to expire in October, should continue? Lee did say in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post that his government plans t...
A teenager from northern China who lost his sight in a brutal attack has emerged as one of the top scorers in the national college entrance examination for students with disabilities. Thirteen years ago, Guo Bin was just six years old when a middle-aged woman lured him away from his home in Shanxi province. After threatening to gouge out his eyes if he continued to cry, the woman attacked him with...
Energy exploration has picked up sharply in Australia, driven by growing Asian gas demand, technological advances and an improved investment climate, with the Iran war underscoring the urgency to develop supply after years of sluggish spending. Quarterly oil and gas exploration spending in Australia, the world’s No 2 liquefied natural gas producer, hit a 10-year high of A$471 million (US$324 mil...
As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. New homes in Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis will offer 10 per cent more space than standard public flats, the housing minister has said while revealing plans to integrate more than ...
Victor Lee is not the kind of man to leave behind his family without a reason, but the 34-year-old Filipino has done the sums and decided where life must take him next: Lithuania. His wife does not want him to go. She will be left to care for their child, with a video call standing in for a husband, while Lee hauls cargo through the seaports of the Baltic. His paperwork is nearly done. He has fini...
Sovereign wealth funds and central banks managing US$29 trillion in assets are turning to energy assets, and raising concerns about the dollar, in a portfolio reassessment driven by unprecedented geopolitical shifts, according to a survey published on Monday by independent global investment management firm Invesco. The survey of 90 sovereign wealth funds and 54 central banks showed an increasing ...
A Chinese farmer has generated a buzz online by planting a forest of more than 170 surveillance cameras on his land in the hope of boosting his compensation under a land purchase scheme. Footage circulating on social media – which showed the poles standing almost shoulder to shoulder on a hillside in Badong county, Hubei province – prompted rampant speculation about what could possibly warrant suc...
A US official said on Sunday that Washington and Tehran agreed to halt attacks after new tit-for-tat strikes strained their interim deal, with the sides planning to renew talks aimed at ending the Middle East war. The exchanges have underscored the fragility of a Pakistan-brokered agreement to end the conflict that has killed thousands and snarled the flow of oil shipments through the vital Strait...
Iran’s top diplomat warned Sunday that any attempt by ships to bypass its preferred route through the Strait of Hormuz would “increase tensions” in the Middle East, as US and Iranian forces again traded attacks. The exchanges underscored the fragility of a Pakistan-brokered agreement aimed at ending the war launched by the United States and Israel in February that disrupted shipping through the st...
