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Weeks before mainland Chinese student Carol Chen graduated from Baptist University in Hong Kong in July, the 22-year-old did the math and weighed the cost of living in the city against returning home. Renting a room in the city would consume around half of the HK$20,000 (US$2,552) starting salary she expected as a junior data analyst. “If I go back to Shanghai, I will only need to worry about dail...
Weeks before mainland Chinese student Carol Chen graduated from Baptist University in Hong Kong in July, the 22-year-old did the math and weighed the cost of living in the city against returning home. Renting a room in the city would consume around half of the HK$20,000 (US$2,552) starting salary she expected as a junior data analyst. “If I go back to Shanghai, I will only need to worry about dail...
A kindergarten teacher in China has been suspended from her job and placed under police investigation for using a glue gun to scald a little girl’s lip, causing serious blisters. The incident unfolded on the morning of May 27 in a nursery in Fengxian county, Jiangsu province, eastern China. According to surveillance footage from the classroom, the woman children’s teacher let some children queue u...
US forces struck Iranian coastal radar sites on Saturday after shooting down drones launched by Iran towards the Strait of Hormuz, the US military said, in the latest escalation complicating efforts to end the war between the two countries. The US military believed the four Iranian drones were targeting regional maritime traffic, an official said. US Central Command said on social media that the U...
An unmarried couple on Saturday obtained a birth certificate for their baby boy, four days after their arrest on suspicion of child neglect, but they must still undergo home visits and other assessments before they can regain custody of the infant. The parents of two-month-old Danny, Tsang Wai-bong and Kwan Pui-sin, arrived at the Immigration Department headquarters at 11.21am on Saturday after me...
The Hong Kong parents of undocumented baby Danny have expressed confidence that they can obtain legal guardianship of their son, who is now in a care home, as immigration authorities could process his birth certificate as early as Saturday. The unmarried couple also said they saw a “glimmer of hope” in resolving the custody case of their four-year-old daughter Lily, whom Swedish authorities have t...
For Beijing-based METiS TechBio CEO Lai Tsai-ta, ageing is comparable to bugs building up in a complex software system – it happens once errors begin to accumulate in the genetic code of human cells, such as their DNA sequences. “Those errors can be reprogrammed. It becomes possible to use AI to read, rewrite and reverse cells, or at least slow the ageing process,” Lai said in an interview with th...
Waves break along Cenang Beach as the sun drops over the Andaman Sea, washing Langkawi’s white sand in gold. Tourists sip fresh coconuts beneath rows of bright umbrellas, gazing out at the “Jewel of Kedah”: a duty-free archipelago long sold as one of Malaysia’s premier tropical escapes. Out on the water, meanwhile, small boats traverse the 8km (five miles) of open water that separates Langkawi fro...
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he currently saw no reason to meet Volodymyr Zelensky after the Ukrainian president published an open letter proposing they hold face-to-face talks to agree an end to a war now in its fifth year. In his letter, which was sent to other countries, including the US, Zelensky said most Russians had grown tired of Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, hig...
Indonesia is considering buying hi-tech policing equipment from China, setting out a shopping list for technology ranging from drones to tactical armoured vehicles at a police equipment trade show in Beijing. The Indonesian National Police is particularly interested in counterterrorism equipment, including intelligence technology, tactical weapons, bomb disposal gear and special purpose vehicles, ...
Given that control over energy reinforces superpower status, the contest of the century has morphed into an intense rivalry between China, a rising “electrostate”, and the United States, the world’s hydrocarbon hegemon safeguarding its position. China recognises that electricity drives its economy. Despite being a major producer of coal, crude oil and natural gas, China remains an importer of thes...
Taiwan’s main opposition leader said cross-strait peace can be maintained as long as Taipei did not move towards “de jure independence”, during her trip in the United States. Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the Kuomintang (KMT), attended a closed-door seminar at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on Thursday, according to a KMT statement on Friday. Cheng told the seminar that pe...
US President Donald Trump said Friday he wants his incoming acting spy chief to start firing employees, deepening the controversy over the appointment of a man with no previous intelligence experience. Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was named by the Republican president on Tuesday as acting Director of National Intelligence. “If he cut, I wouldn’t mind t...
A firestorm of recrimination raged in France on Friday over failures in the justice system that kept a man now suspected in the disappearance and death of an 11-year-old girl out of custody despite allegations that he preyed on young adolescents. The disappearance of the girl identified by police as Lyhanna and days of searches that ended with the discovery of her body in a disused grain silo have...
A vaccine targeting a broad range of viruses that was designed using artificial intelligence had a “modest” effect on immune systems in a small, early trial, according to a new study. The trial marks the first time a vaccine whose active ingredient was entirely designed by AI has been tested in humans, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK said on Friday. The experimental jab is int...
President Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully barred applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship, a US federal judge ruled on Friday. Chief US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people fr...
Actor Anthony Head, best known for his roles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso, has died at the age of 72, his family announced on Friday. The British actor, the brother of singer Murray Head, was best known as librarian Rupert Giles in the cult US supernatural television series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, which ran from 1997 to 2003. “It is with heavy hearts that we announce the death...
A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station prompted five astronauts to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours on Friday as Russia attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory, Nasa said. The four astronauts of Nasa’s Crew-12 mission aboard the station – two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut – along with another US as...
Makeda George steps out of a Mixue store in downtown Brooklyn, New York, clutching a bubble tea as she weaves through a crowd of teenagers. The local resident says she had been eager to try the brand after noticing a surge of new outlets opening in recent months. “I decided to try the bubble tea. It was good,” she said, adding that she did not know it was a Chinese drink chain but figured it was A...
Makeda George steps out of a Mixue store in downtown Brooklyn, New York, clutching a bubble tea as she weaves through a crowd of teenagers. The local resident says she had been eager to try the brand after noticing a surge of new outlets opening in recent months. “I decided to try the bubble tea. It was good,” she said, adding that she did not know it was a Chinese drink chain but figured it was A...
Hong Kong police have arrested a 65-year-old man in connection with a suspected indecent assault case in Mong Kok hours after footage appeared online showing a passenger harassing a schoolgirl sitting in front of him on a bus. Police said officers intercepted the suspect at the boundary checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The victim, 17, is understood to be a Form Three student. The i...
Russia could attack a Nato country within four years according to western intelligence assessments, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned on Friday. He made the comments as he pledged his government would publish a long-delayed defence investment plan before next month’s Nato summit. “It is our intelligence assessment and the assessment of other countries in Nato that there could be an attack by R...
Hong Kong serves as an ideal platform to help Uzbek enterprises expand through its world-class professional services and international business environment, the city’s leader has told the Central Asian country’s prime minister as he wrapped up a five-day regional tour. Sources said Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Friday also invited Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov to be a keynote speaker at the ...
While a wave of job cuts across Asia’s finance and other industries due to wider use of artificial intelligence has spurred concerns, a new study shows that the technology’s net impact on employment is not as clear-cut. Recruiters and industry observers say many companies are adding AI-related roles without having to lay off workers. A study by professional services firm Aon released on Wednesday ...
Cai Qi, the fifth-ranked member in the Communist Party’s hierarchy, has been picked to head the Central Party School, the top training ground for cadres. Cai, 70, sits on the elite Politburo Standing Committee and is secretary of the party’s secretariat as well as director of the party’s general office. Responsible for daily operations of the party’s nerve centre, Cai is often referred to as Presi...
Any US military attack on Cuba would most likely take place this summer, according to a Chinese defence technology company closely tracking US military movements around the island. The assessment by Jingan Technology, a civilian start-up founded in 2021 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said that if the US were to use force against Cuba, it would most likely take the form of a rapid “decapitation an...
China is ramping up its bets on space-based artificial intelligence computing with the launch of a state-backed research institute in Beijing, accelerating a frontier tech race with the US just as Elon Musk’s SpaceX eyes a record-shattering US$75 billion market debut to fund its own orbital AI ambitions. The establishment of the Beijing Space Intelligent Computing Research Institute marks a major ...
Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been placed on a waiting list for a lung transplant after a significant deterioration in her health that likely gave her only a year left to live without the surgery, her doctors said on Friday. The 52-year-old wife of Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the Norwegian throne, was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, a chronic disease that causes scarring...
China and Russia have largely moved away from the US dollar in bilateral trade settlement, with most transactions now settled in their own currencies. Yet cross-border payment bottlenecks persist as Chinese banks carefully manage their exposure to Washington’s sanctions regime, according to a senior Russian banker. At the heart of the friction is a stark balancing act facing Chinese lenders: how t...
The EU’s trade chief has confirmed publicly for the first time that the bloc is considering a specific rule to compel companies to diversify their suppliers, as Europe looks to unwind its dependencies on China. “Diversification now requires a dedicated instrument,” commissioner for trade and economic security Maros Sefcovic said on Friday, adding that he would model it on the manner in which the E...
