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[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Ronald Lu & Partners (RLP Asia) has won first prize of the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and Hong Kong Institute of Architects (HKIA) Urban Renewal Design Ideas Competition in the District Study for Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok (YMDS). The competition invited cross-disciplinary professional teams to apply the new planning tool...
US President Donald Trump might now “more clearly” understand that the US “cannot defeat China” but that it must instead engage a stronger Beijing, according to a prominent Chinese political scientist. Zheng Yongnian, an adviser to the Chinese government, also noted that Beijing had taken a “central position” in trilateral ties between China, the United States and Russia. Beijing and Moscow both c...
Pope Leo and the co-founder of artificial intelligence company Anthropic will launch the pontiff’s first encyclical on May 25, a document on the care of human dignity in the era of AI, the Vatican said on Monday. An encyclical is an official letter from the pope to Roman Catholic bishops, usually to make a statement on official teachings. The presence of Anthropic’s Christopher Olah at the Vatican...
A licensing scheme allowing dogs into Hong Kong restaurants has attracted strong initial interest, with 70 per cent of the 1,000-place quota filled on the first day, according to food hygiene authorities. In response to inquiries from the South China Morning Post, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said on Monday it had received about 700 applications by 6pm. The application window clos...
A licensing scheme allowing dogs into Hong Kong restaurants has attracted strong initial interest, with 70 per cent of the 1,000-place quota filled on the first day, according to food hygiene authorities. In response to inquiries from the South China Morning Post, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said on Monday it had received about 700 applications by 6pm. The application window clos...
The World Health Organization opened a meeting of global health ministers on Monday amid concern over deadly hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks and uncertainty over announced US and Argentinian withdrawals. While the rare hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that has gripped global attention is not officially on the agenda, it is expected to feature prominently in discussions, alongside the latest Ebo...
Owners at Wang Chi House, the only block spared in Hong Kong’s fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court, have until October 15 to finalise the sale of homes under a government buyback scheme – provided more than 75 per cent of them indicate their intention to sell by the end of next month. However, the tight timeline has sparked widespread frustration among residents, who complain they are being pressured to m...
Donald Trump’s comment that he is “not looking to have somebody go independent” has sparked debate in Taiwan over whether it undermines the ruling party’s pro-independence platform. Trump made the remark after last week’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, where Taiwan emerged as one of the most sensitive issues in Sino-US relations. “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent,...
A Spanish court acquitted Shakira in a tax fraud case, ordering the government to return more than 55 million euros (US$64 million) in wrongly imposed fines, according to a court document. The decision follows years of tax troubles in Spain for the Colombian superstar. The ruling relates to a dispute over the 2011 tax year in which Spanish authorities failed to prove that the singer was a resident...
The Philippine Senate convened on Monday as an impeachment court for Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio, even as a fresh battle for control of the chamber threatens to shape the direction of her trial and the fallout from the crimes-against-humanity case against her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, in The Hague. Duterte-Carpio was impeached by the House of Representatives last week on all...
China is stepping up economic engagement with Russia by hosting the 10th edition of a major bilateral expo ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected trip to Beijing this week – just days after his American counterpart, Donald Trump, visited there last week. The back-to-back visits to the Chinese capital by two of the world’s most influential leaders highlight an uptick in diplomatic act...
Birthright citizenship has long been considered a settled issue in the United States. It became the law of the land in 1868 with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed citizenship, due process and equal protection to anyone born in the US. Originally designed to ensure citizenship for slaves brought from Africa, its application was extended to Chinese and other groups in the afterm...
A Hong Kong police chief inspector has admitted accepting more than HK$1.1 million (US$140,463) in cash and gifts from a businessman in exchange for terminating a criminal investigation against him and divulging confidential information about two other cases. Tsuen Wan Court on Monday recorded a guilty plea from Ho Siu-tung, 40, on two counts each of accepting advantages as a public servant and mi...
Issuing “several thousand” licences to ride-hailing vehicles under a proposed regulatory framework will be insufficient to meet demand, a Hong Kong government transport advisory body has said, calling for a quota that will not compromise existing services. Speaking after meeting government officials on Monday, Professor Wong Sze-chun, chairman of the Transport Advisory Committee, said members did ...
An unemployed man has received a suspended jail sentence for reposting a social media post by a fugitive inciting the Hong Kong public to boycott the Legislative Council election last year. Before suspending the punishment for 24 months, West Kowloon Court on Monday handed down a two-month jail term to Lam Kin-sik, 67, after he admitted to violating the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordi...
A woman with a chronic illness has been found dead in a Hong Kong public housing flat where her uninjured adult daughter, who suffers from mental illness, had been staying with her for at least two days. Police received a report at about 1.50pm on Monday from a 42-year-old woman who said she could not reach her 66-year-old mother and 34-year-old younger sister, who lived in Fu Ying House, Fu Cheon...
The US Africa Command said on Monday it had carried out additional air strikes against Islamic State targets in northeastern Nigeria on Sunday, in coordination with the Nigerian government, as joint operations against militant groups intensify. Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters said the latest strikes were conducted in the Metele area of Borno State, following intelligence that fighters had conver...
Chinese memory chip stocks rallied on Monday after ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) disclosed sharply stronger first-quarter results and an upbeat first-half outlook in its updated listing prospectus, as the global memory shortage boosts China’s semiconductor supply chain. GigaDevice, a chip designer and CXMT shareholder, rose 6.57 per cent on Monday to close at 400 yuan per share, taking its g...
Chinese police have announced the arrests of 16 people suspected of hacking drone systems and vowed a nationwide crackdown on illegal drone use. China’s Ministry of Public Security released details on 10 cases on Monday to warn the public about illegal drone use. The suspects were arrested between January and March. It came as part of a nationwide “Clean Skies” campaign launched by the ministry in...
Protests erupted in Kenya’s capital Nairobi on Monday as a nationwide public transport strike kicked off in protest at rising fuel prices. Commuters were stranded in various suburbs and the city centre remained deserted as motorists with private vehicles opted to stay home as protesters burned tyres on major roads. The Kenya Association of Private Schools had advised its members to assess and dete...
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...
