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A Hong Kong court has ordered a civil servant at public broadcaster RTHK to perform 160 hours of community service after he admitted filming upskirt footage of a woman in public. Chong Tak-yin, assistant chief assignment editor at RTHK’s Chinese news and current affairs division, received the sentence on Wednesday at West Kowloon Court after pleading guilty to one count of unlawful recording or ob...
Hong Kong’s growing number of expatriates is boosting the city’s residential property leasing market with luxury rents likely to rise by about 5 per cent this year and continue their upswing in 2027, according to property consultancy JLL. The private residential rental index by the Rating and Valuation Department had surged by 18.5 per cent as of June to 205.8 from the Covid-19 pandemic trough in ...
Long before the digital age, a Ming dynasty scholar made it his mission to map human knowledge from a Chinese perspective. The result was an encyclopaedia spanning 127 volumes known as the Tushu Bian, or Compendium of Illustrations and Texts. The work – published in 1613 – was compiled by Neo-Confucian scholar Zhang Huang and drew on more than 200 printed sources across several decades to document...
“I want to survive.” That was uppermost in Senior Seaman Michael Coccon Johen’s mind while he was drifting in the South China Sea, hours after a free-fall parachute training exercise went wrong. Johen, 27, was one of six Malaysian navy special forces personnel who landed in the sea on August 12 after missing their designated landing site at Pulau Layang-Layang, off Sabah’s coast. It happened durin...
A roller coaster malfunction at a major theme park on the outskirts of Malaysia’s capital city injured 10 people on Saturday, the operator confirmed after coming under fire for what critics called a prolonged silence over the incident. Authorities said on Monday that the riders had suffered minor injuries after the ride abruptly stopped, leaving them stranded. The incident sparked a flurry of comp...
A Chinese-proposed international standard for automotive solid-state batteries has been approved as a new work item by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – marking the first of its kind for the advanced power systems and the nation’s latest effort to shape rules in emerging industries. Led by China, with input from technical experts in France, Japan, South Korea and other countrie...
A Chinese woman developed life-threatening muscle breakdown after her company forced her to perform 200 squats as punishment for unfinished work. The young woman, surnamed Yang, recently moved to Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province and began her first job as a financial consultant at a loan assistance company in June. The role is essentially a tele-sales position. Her team manager, surna...
Singaporean online commentator Amos Yee Pang Sang on Wednesday received four fresh charges linked to posts he made about race and children. This brings his total number of charges to seven, including three for allegedly dodging national service. According to charge sheets, the 27-year-old allegedly promoted feelings of disharmony between racial and religious groups in Singapore in two blog posts i...
North Korea has stepped up its verbal attacks on Japan, issuing more than a dozen denunciations through state media since early July and hardening its rhetoric in recent days by accusing Tokyo of whipping up a “neo-militarist frenzy” and preparing for a “war of aggression”. Analysts said the latest broadsides from Kim Jong-un’s regime reflected both renewed confidence in Pyongyang as ties with Mos...
Japan’s Environment Ministry says it plans to reuse soil collected in decontamination work near the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex at national government branch offices in Miyagi and Saitama prefectures. The government has already reused the soil at 12 sites in Tokyo since July last year, including the prime minister’s office and other buildings in the Kasumigaseki district. E...
South Carolina Senator Darline Graham won the Republican nomination in seeking a full term on Tuesday, overcoming a rocky moment in last week’s debate, when she struggled to answer questions about Taiwan and the South China Sea. Graham, a political newcomer, was appointed to the seat in July following the unexpected death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate’s most senior and influent...
A group of Hong Kong-listed biotechnology companies have seen their stock prices surge in the wake of Moderna’s breakthrough cancer vaccine trial, as the Chinese companies push forward with similar vaccine programmes. The companies – from Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals to Li Ka-shing-backed CK Life Sciences – already have a slew of cancer vaccines in development, which could have a large potentia...
Philippine military officials said on Tuesday that Filipino and US personnel had tried to access a closed Chinese-linked steel plant in Mindanao as part of planning for a future naval facility and joint military exercises, extending a dispute that had already drawn protests from Beijing over Manila’s handling of Chinese workers at the site. Sanjia Steel Corporation, which leases 22.6 hectares (56 ...
A “widening” AI gap between advanced economies and developing countries has sparked calls to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation framework to develop an open, fairer and culturally sensitive governance system. Although the technology is often hailed as a great leveller in an era of sluggish economic growth, a conference held in southern China last weekend heard that many Global South countri...
A “widening” AI gap between advanced economies and developing countries has sparked calls to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation framework to develop an open, fairer and culturally sensitive governance system. Although the technology is often hailed as a great leveller in an era of sluggish economic growth, a conference held in southern China last weekend heard that many Global South countri...
Ooshies were not just fun to collect – the tiny plastic Disney figurines were powerful enough to move sales between Australia’s supermarket giants. Woolworths Group said on Wednesday that Australian food sales jumped 7.6 per cent in the first eight weeks of the 2027 financial year, with its Ooshies promotion contributing an estimated 1.5 to 2 percentage points of growth. That accelerated from 4.6 ...
Mainland Chinese enterprises will play a key role in developing Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis by sharing financial risks and helping align the megaproject with national strategy, according to real estate and political advisers. Their analysis followed the award of the blueprint’s first pilot area in Hung Shui Kiu to HSK New Development, a consortium led by five mainland giants and local develope...
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi remains in a strong position despite a poll showing falling support for her administration, ahead of an expected cabinet reshuffle to bolster her coalition government. A new cabinet could help the government win over voters, reward ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers and win the support of junior coalition partner Ishin no Kai, analysts have said....
US President Donald Trump’s administration is starting to send staff back to some diplomatic missions in the Middle East that were evacuated or downsized amid tensions with Iran, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The posts in Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Baghdad, Iraq, are among those where staff will return, the sources said. Family members will also be allowed to return to ...
US President Donald Trump’s administration is starting to send staff back to some diplomatic missions in the Middle East that were evacuated or downsized amid tensions with Iran, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The posts in Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Baghdad, Iraq, are among those where staff will return, the sources said. Family members will also be allowed to return to ...
China’s deliberation on its sweeping cross-border anti-corruption law may ripple through Hong Kong’s financial and property markets, as Beijing seeks harsher punishments for corrupt officials and broadens its scrutiny of the massive pool of wealth transferred overseas. Hong Kong remains in focus after the draft law was submitted on Tuesday to the standing committee of the national legislature for ...
A man killed eight of his relatives, including four children, as they gathered for Sunday dinner at a home outside Billings, Montana, weeks after his parents asked him to move out, a family member told Associated Press. Brad Ireland, whose former wife and two children were among the dead, identified the shooter as 44-year-old Alan Smith. Smith’s parents, who were also killed, had asked him to move...
A man killed eight of his relatives, including four children, at a Sunday dinner at a home in Billings, Montana, before taking his own life, a spokesperson for the family told Associated Press. Jennifer Mercer, who set up an online fundraiser to help cover funeral costs and other expenses and was authorised to release details, identified the victims as representing four generations of the blended ...
A prominent Sikh separatist said Tuesday that the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have warned him that he faces a new credible threat to his life even as a man from India faces sentencing later this year for a 2023 death plot against him. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for Sikhs For Justice, said he was warned by FBI agents who visited him August 12 that he should not travel un...
A prominent Sikh separatist said on Tuesday that the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have warned him that he faces a new credible threat to his life even as a man from India faces sentencing later this year for a 2023 death plot against him. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for Sikhs For Justice, said he was warned by FBI agents who visited him last Thursday that he should not tr...
The South China Morning Post has launched a major data project diving into President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-graft campaign. In the second part of an accompanying series, William Zheng examines how the campaign has targeted corrupt officials outside the Chinese capital and long after retirement. It used to be an easy choice for senior Chinese officials deciding between a local government posit...
A taboo-breaking book about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and private life, written by two exiled Russian journalists, won a newly established French literary prize on Tuesday. The book, titled The Tsar in Propria Persona: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All, draws on more than two decades of investigative reporting by journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin. The work won a newly established l...
A taboo-breaking book about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and private life, written by two exiled Russian journalists, won a newly established French literary prize on Tuesday. The book, The Tsar in Propria Persona: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All, draws on more than two decades of investigative reporting by journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin. The work won a newly established literary...
The gaffe at last month’s Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, where a US State Department presentation displayed a map of Africa with every country mislabelled, serves as more than a source of embarrassment. It was a potent symbol of the distance between Washington’s rhetoric and its real stance regarding the African continent. Earlier this year, Nick Checker, a senior US State Department offi...
On the tree-lined streets of Sterling, northern Virginia, Lindsay Shaw’s home sits across from an industrial neighbour that has consumed the past several years of her life: a data centre. When Shaw sits outside, she can hear its constant hum. At night, the security lights blaze through her window, making it harder to sleep. Gas turbines, diesel fumes, and 24/7 industrial noise have choked Shaw’s n...
