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This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong has been hit by further heavy downpours, with the weather forecaster issuing a red rainstorm warning and education authorities suspending afternoon classes. The warning was issued at 12.10 pm, as the Hong Kong Observatory cautioned of flooding risks a...
Hong Kong has been hit by more heavy downpours, with a risk of flooding persisting, but the Observatory expects conditions to improve during the Tuen Ng Festival. The Hong Kong Observatory cancelled an amber rainstorm warning at 9.25am on Thursday after it was issued following more than 30mm (1.2 inches) of rain within an hour. In Sai Kung East, hourly rainfall was expected to exceed 70mm. The for...
A teenager thrown to the ground Wednesday when a Central Park carriage horse bolted away from its driver has died, according to police. The 18-year-old was riding in the horse-drawn carriage with three other passengers when the accident happened just before 3pm, according to the New York Police Department. At least two passengers were sent flying out of the careening cab. The teenager was initiall...
A leading green group has urged Hong Kong to align with coming national standards on excessive packaging, warning that the city generated at least 2.7 million kg (5.9 million lbs) of waste from e-commerce parcels last year. The call coincided with an online survey by non-profit group The Green Earth, which found that 60 per cent of respondents in Hong Kong considered parcel packaging excessive, wh...
I seldom, if ever, assume people in general do a particular thing, unless, of course, I do it too. But if it is a criminal act, then I assume in general that nobody would do it. There is a peculiarity, it seems, with taking office supplies home, like a pen, or a soda, or a coffee capsule. Apparently, some people think it is no big deal, or even that there is nothing wrong with it. Some go so far a...
The Hong Kong government has launched a public consultation on the city’s first five-year development plan, a blueprint aimed at aligning with China’s newly approved 15th five-year plan. Officials have promised a “macroscopic, strategic and forward-looking” road map that will guide Hong Kong’s economic and social development for the rest of this decade. That invitation to think in five-year horizo...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he thinks Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is his “biggest fan” among world leaders. “Japan’s doing very well,” Trump said at a press conference after a Group of Seven summit concluded in the French spa resort of Evian-les-Bains. “I have to tell you, she thinks I did a great job. You have to call her and ask her. She’s doing a very good job, by the...
A male midwife in eastern China has won praise for his professionalism and striking looks while defying relatives who dismissed his career choice as embarrassing. Zhang Jintao, 25, from Yiwu in Zhejiang province, became a midwife at a leading provincial hospital after graduating from university. According to Southern Daily, men accounted for just three per cent of China’s nurses in 2021, the numbe...
On a summer evening in 2011, two high-speed trains hurtling through the Chinese countryside met in a fireball of twisted metal and shattered glass. The Wenzhou disaster, as it came to be known, killed 40 people and injured nearly 200. The official inquiry traced the catastrophe to a lightning strike that had fried a trackside circuit, making one train “invisible” to the control centre, which then ...
China poses a threat to America’s senior citizens through drug supply chains, financial scams and data privacy, a congressional hearing highlighted on Wednesday, with lawmakers and witnesses framing it as a national security issue. “Fifty years ago, we never would have given the Soviets the kind of leeway we give China: the access they have to our economy and our information, the dependence they e...
Hong Kong graduates believe the city’s finance industry is its most attractive and stable sector, making them more optimistic about career opportunities than their global peers, according to a study by the CFA Institute, which trains investment managers. The New York-based institute’s “2026 Graduate Outlook Survey”, released on Wednesday, found that 71 per cent of Hong Kong graduates rated their c...
Iran and the US have signed a peace deal that will take immediate effect, with Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the US lifting its naval blockade, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced. Sharif, a chief mediator since the US and Israel entered the war with Iran at the end of February, made the announcement in a social media post on Thursday morning. “The Memorandum has been sign...
Iran and the US have signed a peace deal that will take immediate effect, with Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the US lifting its naval blockade, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced. Sharif, a chief mediator since the US and Israel entered the war with Iran at the end of February, made the announcement in a social media post on Thursday morning. “The Memorandum has been sign...
Iran and the US have signed a peace deal that will take immediate effect, with Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the US lifting its naval blockade, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced. Sharif, a chief mediator since the US and Israel entered the war with Iran at the end of February, made the announcement in a social media post on Thursday morning. “The Memorandum has been sign...
Iran and the US have signed a peace deal that will take immediate effect, with Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the US lifting its naval blockade, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced. Sharif, a chief mediator since the US and Israel entered the war with Iran at the end of February, made the announcement in a social media post on Thursday morning. “The Memorandum has been sign...
Hong Kong and Macau can complement rather than compete with each other in tourism development, officials and industry leaders in the gaming hub have said, as it continues its decades-long push for economic diversification. Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of the Macau Government Tourism Office, said that the two cities had long worked together to attract overseas visitors and should conti...
Japan’s push to build its own civil aviation sector and stay competitive in the technology race against China could receive a boost from a potential partnership with American aircraft giant Boeing. The country is already a key Boeing partner, possesses advanced manufacturing technologies and could benefit from a captive domestic market – factors that analysts say make its plan to develop a commerc...
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have been ranked among the top 20 in a global league table – the first time two of the city’s universities have achieved this simultaneously – with CUHK making significant gains in its reputation among employers. The UK-based education information firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also pointed out on Thursday that Hong K...
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have been ranked among the top 20 in a global league table – the first time two of the city’s universities have achieved this simultaneously – with CUHK making significant gains in its reputation among employers. The UK-based education information firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also pointed out on Thursday that Hong K...
As US President Donald Trump moves to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through a peace deal with Iran, major shipping companies such as Maersk are likely to stop short of resuming normal operations in the near term amid lingering concerns about the waterway’s security and the durability of the agreement, according to observers. Some industry insiders said the deal’s impact on the global shipping indust...
A senior US official on Wednesday released the text of an agreement reached between Washington and Tehran to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after months of conflict had battered the global economy and sent oil prices soaring. The outline of the agreement, titled “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran”, was rel...
As national EU leaders meet in Brussels to thrash out a possible new China policy, speculation is high as to where they all stand amid fluid member-state dynamics. In the last part of this three-part series, we look at whether the conventional wisdom will be fundamentally changed in the EU and how the bloc could forge a united front in dealing with China. Over dinner on Thursday, leaders from the ...
As national EU leaders meet in Brussels to thrash out a possible new China policy, speculation is high as to where they all stand amid fluid member-state dynamics. In the last part of this three-part series, we look at whether the conventional wisdom will be fundamentally changed in the EU and how the bloc could forge a united front in dealing with China. Over dinner on Thursday, leaders from the ...
US President Donald Trump is happy with Canada’s arrangement to allow a capped number of Chinese electric vehicles to be imported at a low-tariff rate, Prime Minister Mark Carney said. When asked about Carney’s comment, Trump did not express explicit approval, but said he could understand the quota. The deal, unveiled during Carney’s trip to Beijing in January, allows as many as 49,000 Chinese EVs...
Nobody knew how the tree grew popular online, but for about two months, villagers near Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, found drones flying over their wheat fields. One video captured a tree in the middle of a farmer’s field, just as the fog was about to dissipate, “like an ink painting”, Beijing News said. Then people began flocking to the area to take photos. It was the only tree in hundre...
Nobody knew how the tree grew popular online, but for about two months, villagers near Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, found drones flying over their wheat fields. One video captured a tree in the middle of a farmer’s field, just as the fog was about to dissipate, “like an ink painting”, Beijing News said. Then people began flocking to the area to take photos. It was the only tree in hundre...
A top Huawei Technologies executive’s admission that the Chinese telecoms company illegally conducted business in Iran can be used in the coming US trial against Huawei, according to a judge’s ruling filed in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou made the admission as part of a 2021 deal to dismiss the criminal charges she faced in the case. In a four-page statem...
The US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday, but policymakers expect a hike in borrowing costs later this year amid growing concerns about inflation lodged above the US central bank’s 2 per cent target. New quarterly projections showed nine Fed officials now anticipate a hike in rates by the end of 2026, and an updated policy statement removed language that had been used to fla...
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a health insurance executive in Manhattan, plans to argue at his murder trial that he was undergoing an extreme mental health crisis at the time of the alleged killing, a judge revealed at a hearing on Wednesday. The strategy poses steep legal hurdles but could lead to a jury convicting Mangione of the lesser crime of manslaughter, which carries s...
US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday attempted to defuse escalating tensions over the recent killing of three Indian sailors by American naval forces off the coast of Oman. Speaking to the media after their first bilateral meeting in 16 months, Trump said both Washington and New Delhi continue to “work together” on the issue, calling commercial vessel oper...
