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HK Electric, the smaller of Hong Kong’s two electricity suppliers, will cut fuel surcharges for customers in May but has warned that costs could significantly rise later in the year due to the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. The company said on Friday that its fuel clause charge for May will fall by 4.4 HK cents per kilowatt-hour to 26 HK cents per kWh, from 30.4 HK cents in April, citi...
Senator Steve Daines will lead a bipartisan US Congressional delegation to China next week, just ahead of a visit by President Donald Trump. The five-member group will arrive on May 1 and visit Beijing and Shanghai, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The delegation will include first-time visitors to China, the report said, without elaborati...
A winning bid involving Henderson Land Development to operate a major Hong Kong harbourfront event space has expanded the developer’s footprint in Central to three prime locations, a situation that experts have said could result in greater accessibility and more visitors from surrounding commercial properties. Central Grand, a 50:50 joint venture formed by Henderson and concert organiser YW Compan...
As my wife and I quaffed our way through a sumptuous five-course South African wine tasting dinner at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) early this week, the world food crisis and global food insecurity seemed a very long way away. Yet as the US war on Iran approached its third month, with the Strait of Hormuz still blocked and a host of critical commodities hostage to the conflict, ...
Just weeks before US President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Beijing next month, China is sending two giant pandas to Atlanta in what observers describe as a “goodwill gesture” amid persistent tensions that range from trade to broader security issues. In a press release on Friday, the China Wildlife Conservation Association said male panda Ping Ping and female Fu Shuang would travel to the US un...
US President Donald Trump’s order for the US to attack Iranian gunboats is the latest sign that an asymmetrical war-fighting strategy is stymieing the world’s mightiest navy, with US aircraft and destroyers forced to track swarming speedboats in a vital energy waterway. “I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be,” Trump said Thursday in a soci...
As Southeast Asian leaders descend on Cebu in the Philippines for the 48th Asean summit on May 8, immediate concerns such as the global energy crunch will top the agenda. Yet a year-end deadline to finalise a long-delayed code of conduct in the South China Sea looms for bloc chair Manila. At a panel at Atma Jaya University in Jakarta on Thursday, Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro...
Although he was already married, a man began dating a domestic helper he was introduced to and later got married to her in Batam, Indonesia. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) caught wind of the bigamy and flagged the case to the police, who arrested both the man and the woman. Low Kok Peng, a 61-year-old Singaporean man, was sentenced to two months’ jail on Friday. He pleaded guilty to one charge of ...
US interceptions of Iranian-linked tankers in Asian waters suggest Washington’s maritime pressure campaign may be spreading eastward, raising new risks for Southeast Asian states overseeing crucial sea lanes. Analysts said that although Southeast Asian nations were not parties to the war, countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore were not insulated from rising US-Iran maritime tensions. ...
Burger King in Japan is tempting franchisees of rival fast-food brands like McDonald’s and Mos Burger by offering them 40 million yen (US$250,000) cashback to jump ship. The offer, under its franchise switching plan, is on the table until 3pm on September 30, according to a statement by the chain issued on Wednesday. Applicants must have been in business for at least three years, submit financial ...
Burger King in Japan is tempting franchisees of rival fast-food brands like McDonald’s and Mos Burger by offering them 40 million yen (US$250,000) cashback to jump ship. The offer, under its franchise switching plan, is on the table until 3pm on September 30, according to a statement by the chain issued on Wednesday. Applicants must have been in business for at least three years, submit financial ...
National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik condemned US Republicans’ claim that South Korea was discriminating against e-commerce giant Coupang, calling it “interference in domestic affairs”. His remarks followed a letter sent by 54 US lawmakers in the Republican Study Committee to South Korean Ambassador to the United States Kang Kyung-wha, in which they claimed Seoul was taking discriminatory and un...
Playing one last song on a piano that cannot be retrieved from a fire-ravaged home is among the wishes of residents returning to the scene of the deadly Tai Po blaze, with one man climbing stairs on a fractured leg to try and recover a water boiler linked to his childhood memories. Some of those returning to their homes on Friday had lived in Wang Cheong House, the worst-hit block, where 81 of the...
Playing one last song on a piano that cannot be retrieved from a fire-ravaged home is among the wishes of residents returning to the scene of the deadly Tai Po blaze, with one man climbing stairs on an fractured leg to try and recover a water boiler linked to his childhood memories. Some of those returning to their homes on Friday had lived in Wang Cheong House, the worst-hit block, where 81 of th...
A former senior manager at a major Chinese cryptocurrency exchange has been acquitted by a Hong Kong court of secretly moving about US$5 million in Tether stablecoins, worth around HK$39 million, to his own accounts six years ago. A seven-member High Court jury reached the verdict on Friday to find Chen Boliang, who used to work at cryptocurrency firm Huobi – now known as HTX – not guilty of acces...
A former senior manager at a major Chinese cryptocurrency exchange has been acquitted by a Hong Kong court of secretly moving five million Tether, with a market value of about HK$39 million (US$5 million), to his own accounts six years ago. A seven-member High Court jury reached the verdict on Friday to find Chen Boliang, who used to work at cryptocurrency firm Huobi – now known as HTX – not guilt...
A former senior manager at a major Chinese cryptocurrency exchange has been acquitted by a Hong Kong court of secretly moving five million Tether, with a market value of about HK$39 million (US$5 million), to his own accounts six years ago. A seven-member High Court jury reached the verdict on Friday to find Chen Boliang, who used to work at cryptocurrency firm Huobi – now known as HTX – not guilt...
Hundreds of alleged Mara Salvatrucha gang members sat chained, shaved and mute as they were accused of murder and torture during a mass trial at El Salvador’s notorious CECOT jail on Thursday. Seated in neat columns of plastic chairs in the prison’s main hall, some 220 defendants were accused of collectively carrying out more than 29,000 murders. “We burned her genitals and buttocks” one witness s...
The United Nations very much relied on China for its environmental protection role, including its major funding for biodiversity conservation in the Global South, the organisation’s environment chief said on Thursday. Speaking on the sidelines of the Regional Ecological Summit in Kazakhstan, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said that “China has always been...
The United Nations very much relied on China for its environmental protection role, including its major funding for biodiversity conservation in the Global South, the organisation’s environment chief said on Thursday. Speaking on the sidelines of the Regional Ecological Summit in Kazakhstan, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said that “China has always been...
After two decades of a loveless personal life, a 60-year-old traditional dancer in Japan discovered unexpected late-life love with a protege who is 34 years her junior. In April, the couple made an appearance on the Japanese television show Welcome, Newlyweds!, but they chose to keep their true identities private. The wife, a seasoned performer from Ibaraki in eastern Japan, has dedicated her life...
We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Trump extends Iran ceasefire, claims interception of ‘gift from China’ US President Donald Trump announced a last-minute extension of ...
The United States is offering a reward of up to US$4 million for information leading to the arrest of a Chinese national who fled the US after being convicted of money laundering. The bounty on fugitive Daren Li, 43, was announced by the State Department on Thursday through its Transnational Organised Crime Rewards Programme. In February, Li was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 20 years in p...
The death of a Bangladeshi gaming influencer in an alleged drink-driving crash involving a Malaysian soldier has sparked cries for justice and renewed demands for punitive laws, as anger grows over a second similar fatal case in less than a month. Muzahid Millad, 22 – better known as Advance Gaming – died on Wednesday after the suspect’s car reportedly veered into the opposite lane on the Maju Exp...
Mozambique President Daniel Chapo became the first African head of state to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping this year. Chapo was the tenth national leader overall to meet Xi in Beijing in 2026, following earlier visits from the heads of countries including the UK, Canada, Vietnam and Spain. US President Donald Trump is due to have a summit with Xi during a May 14-15 visit to China. Russian ...
India’s agreement to review Dhaka’s request for Sheikh Hasina’s extradition could hint at more flexibility over a deeply political issue, but observers warn that does not mean New Delhi is ready to hand the former Bangladesh ruler over just yet. The ex-prime minister fled to India in August 2024 after her regime fell to protesters. India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed on April 17 it was ...
Adamant about retaining its runaway lead in supplying smart driving systems in China, Huawei Technologies plans to invest as much as 80 billion yuan (US$11.7 billion) over the next five years to boost computing power essential for training and testing semi-autonomous cars. The massive capital expenditure would enhance the reliability of cars fitted with the Huawei Qiankun ADS autopilot system, as ...
Indonesia’s top diplomat said the country will not pursue tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Malacca, seeking to calm concerns after its finance minister raised the idea this week. “As a trading nation, Indonesia supports freedom of navigation and expects open sea lanes,” Foreign Minister Sugiono said on Thursday in Jakarta. “So Indonesia is not in a position to impose such charges – tha...
DeepSeek has finally released its much-anticipated next-generation foundational artificial intelligence model, the open-source V4, which it said was competitive with leading US closed-source models from the likes of OpenAI and Google DeepMind. The Hangzhou-based AI start-up released two versions of the model on Friday, with the V4-pro model boasting 1.6 trillion parameters, making it the company’s...
DeepSeek has finally released its much-anticipated next-generation foundational artificial intelligence model, the open-source V4, which it said was competitive with leading US closed-source models from the likes of OpenAI and Google DeepMind. DeepSeek released two versions of the model on Friday, with the V4-pro model boasting 1.6 trillion parameters, making it the Hangzhou start-up’s biggest eve...
