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French teenagers blockaded some high schools and marched through cities on Thursday after the government promised to address their grievances about teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings but gave no specific details. The protest movement, now into its third week, has exposed deep tensions in France between popular demands for investments in deteriorating public services and a cash-stra...
An aide to Russia’s president arrived in China on Thursday for a visit that will be closely watched for signs of preparation for a possible trilateral summit with the US during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting next month. Nikolai Patrushev, who is also chairman of Russia’s Maritime Board, was set to hold talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
South Korea said on Thursday it would recall its ambassador to Ukraine in response to a deepening diplomatic row over the transfer of North Korean prisoners of war to Seoul. The decision comes as the two countries have been at loggerheads since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sparked anger in Seoul by disclosing the transfer of the prisoners, who were captured on the battlefield early last ...
Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo, has defied the ongoing political tensions between Beijing and Tokyo and soft consumer sentiment in China to log a rebound in sales and profits on the Chinese mainland. The Japanese firm said the 2026 financial year, which ended in August, had been a period in which its mainland China business had “made steady progress, with e...
US President Donald Trump pressed Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during last month’s summit to end a deep freeze in relations with Japan’s Sanae Takaichi, the South China Morning Post reported. Trump raised Japan’s grievances over Chinese restrictions imposed following Takaichi’s comment in November that the Japanese military might intervene in the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, according...
Hong Kong national security police have arrested two people, including an insurance broker, on suspicion of publishing allegedly seditious posts on social media. A force spokesman said on Thursday that the national security department arrested a man and a woman, both 38, on Tuesday. They were suspected of “doing with a seditious intention an act that had a seditious intention” under the Safeguardi...
Psychological abuse can be hard to detect, Hong Kong welfare experts have warned, urging social workers and teachers to look for subtle changes in children’s behaviour amid outrage over a viral video showing a girl carrying heavy bags of beer as her stepfather called her “useless”. Welfare groups said on Thursday that emotional and verbal abuse were among the most common yet least recognised forms...
Chew Kin Wah spent seven seasons gracing Malaysian television screens as “Kee Tat” in the hit sitcom Kopitiam in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now 61, the Malaysian actor is still working, albeit more selectively, taking projects when the right offers land on his table. “There is no thought of retiring when you are doing something you enjoy,” he told This Week in Asia, adding: “Money helps. Neve...
A care scandal has erupted in Thailand after a nursing home was exposed for confining old and sick residents in beds covered by iron cages with barely a foot of space above their heads. Images of bedridden patients at the Sothornchai Nursing Home in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand, have shocked Thais since they were shared earlier this week on the television current affairs show Hone Krasae. Thaila...
Shares of artificial intelligence chipmaker Shanghai Biren Technology tumbled more than 12 per cent in Hong Kong on Thursday amid plans to raise HK$4 billion (US$510 million) through a share placement, as competition with other Chinese Nvidia challengers intensifies. The sell-off followed a stock exchange filing by the Hong Kong-listed company on late Wednesday, which revealed it had engaged placi...
A legal challenge to the vice-presidency of Indonesia’s Gibran Rakabuming Raka could haunt his political future even though he has survived damning court findings on his educational qualifications. The Constitutional Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition to unseat the son of former president Joko Widodo, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing. But it also found no convincing evidence tha...
Exuberance among cornerstone investors in Hong Kong’s booming initial public offering (IPO) market seems to be fading, forcing some issuers that had hoped to list this month to postpone their offerings. With more than 60 per cent of new listings in the third quarter now trading below their issue prices, cornerstone investors – who typically receive guaranteed allocations in exchange for holding sh...
Hong Kong police have recovered about HK$30 million worth of stolen gold and arrested two men in connection with an elaborate hotel-room swap in which 30kg of gold granules were replaced with eight bottles of fabric softener. The force said it received a report early on Wednesday from a mainland Chinese man who said about 30kg of gold granules, valued at roughly HK$30 million (US$3.8 million), wer...
Chinese scientists have created a wearable all-in-one device combining a glucose sensor and insulin micropump that they say paves the way for a fully autonomous mini artificial pancreas, although it has so far only been tested on mice. Unlike existing commercial systems for managing diabetes that typically require patients to wear two separate patches for monitoring and hormone delivery, the new p...
US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has introduced Chinese-language options to its Claude chatbot in supported markets, even as it continues to block users from mainland China. Checks by the South China Morning Post on Thursday confirmed that Claude’s web interface now lets users select simplified and traditional Chinese as their preferred on-screen language. China also briefly appeared a...
The mother of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung has described her daughter’s former father-in-law as a “cunning old fox” who clung to her family’s fortune, rejecting his lawyer’s suggestion that he bought a Rolls-Royce with money earned from business after his retirement. Cheung Yin-fa told the High Court on Thursday that her daughter had given Kwong Kau a monthly allowance of HK$20,000...
The mother of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung has described her daughter’s former father-in-law as a “cunning old fox” who clung to her family’s fortune, rejecting his lawyer’s suggestion that he bought a Rolls-Royce with money earned from business activities after his retirement. Cheung Yin-fa told the High Court on Thursday that her daughter had given Kwong Kau a monthly allowance o...
Britain said on Thursday its nearly 200-year-old consulate in Jerusalem would remain operating at a smaller scale, renamed as the “UK Mission” in the city, after Israel ordered it shut in a dispute over sanctions on settlements. Israel last month issued a 30-day deadline for Britain to close the consulate after London announced sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, ...
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday said Malaysia would do “whatever is possible” to strengthen cooperation with Myanmar and fully reintegrate the diplomatically isolated nation into the Asean fold. The pledge came during an unusually high-profile official welcome for Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing, despite Malaysia’s position that such engagement does not amount to recognition of his gove...
North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un, denounced on Thursday South Korea’s plans to provide medical equipment aid to Pyongyang, calling it a “political provocation” and violation of its sovereignty. In a statement carried by state media KCNA, Kim criticised Seoul for publicising its efforts to obtain United Nations sanctions exemptions for a medical aid package, say...
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Wanying “Heather” Zhang be held in custody, after her lawyers – who had fought to keep her out of jail – said she “looks forward to establishing” her innocence at trial. They argued that the US government’s case centred on a single day of alleged surveillance in Seattle and was not evidence that she posed a flight risk. US Magistrate Judge Steve Kim sided with ...
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is planning to visit China in the coming weeks, even as relations between the two countries sour over trade, according to multiple sources familiar with the arrangement. It will mark the first official visit to China since 2018 for Steinmeier, a former foreign minister whose decade-long tenure as president ends in March 2027. The visit will coincide with Ch...
Hong Kong police have arrested a man for allegedly splashing red paint at the joint office of two lawmakers, accusing them of being unhelpful. A source said on Thursday that police arrested a 66-year-old man over the incident at the shared office of Kowloon East lawmaker Bill Tang Ka-piu and insurance-sector legislator Chan Pui-leung. The force said it received a report at 6.40am from a security g...
A newly opened China-backed air force training centre in Laos could unsettle Vietnam, even as it aims to modernise Vientiane’s military and balance defence ties among Beijing, Moscow and Hanoi, observers say. China’s National Defence Ministry said last Tuesday that the joint support and training facility at Ban Keun Airport in the Laotian capital would strengthen the expertise of local air force p...
A gilded statue of US President Donald Trump naked went on display in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Danish artist Jens Galschiot is exhibiting the satirical statue, titled Orange Plague and also known as King of Injustice, at the parliament’s headquarters in the eastern French city. It shows the president sitting naked on the shoulders of a much smaller man. In his han...
The US has ended its military mission in Iraq, a move analysts said could give Baghdad more room for diversified partnerships and indirectly benefit China’s energy and commercial interests. But they cautioned that the shift was unlikely to create a power vacuum for Beijing to fill, with China lacking both the ambition and capacity to take on the US security role. The United States formally ended i...
As China and the European Union began a fresh round of trade talks in Beijing on Thursday, observers on both sides appeared to agree on one thing: a big breakthrough was unlikely. Chinese firms based in Europe said they hoped the talks could achieve some “limited progress” to help stabilise the trade relationship, while European analysts remained cautious about the potential outcome. “They’re boun...
Australia may have vast tracts of land and political will to support the growth of the artificial intelligence industry, but the development of data centres to power the technology is proving more challenging. Last month, property developer Goodman Group withdrew its application for a 90-megawatt data centre in Lane Cove, on Sydney’s lower north shore, after months of opposition from residents abo...
Hong Kong police have arrested a foreign domestic helper for allegedly slapping a five-year-old boy who refused to eat his meal at a Kowloon City flat. Police received a report at about 11.57pm on Wednesday from the boy’s mother, who said her son had been ill-treated by her 37-year-old helper at their home on 97 Hau Wong Road. Police said the woman checked the flat’s surveillance cameras after her...
