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Elon Musk did not appear on Monday for a voluntary interview with Paris prosecutors, who had summoned the American tech billionaire over a probe into his social media platform X and AI chatbot Grok. Prosecutors said they had “taken note of the absence of the first people summoned,” without mentioning Musk’s name. The billionaire had dubbed the French authorities “retards” weeks earlier in a French...
FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, following the publication of an article on Friday claiming the director had a drinking problem that could pose a threat to national security. The magazine’s story, initially titled “Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job,” cited more than two dozen anonymous sources expressing...
Hong Kong travellers in Japan were reported safe by at least one major tour operator while the Immigration Department said it was closely monitoring the situation after a powerful earthquake struck off the country’s northeast coast on Monday, triggering tsunami warnings. Steve Huen Kwok-chuen, executive director of EGL Tours, said the operator currently had about 40 tour groups in Japan, including...
Hong Kong police have arrested a 16-year-old garage worker for allegedly driving without a licence after he lost control of a Tesla car and crashed into a parked vehicle, pushing the latter through a property agency’s storefront and leaving an employee injured. The force said on Monday that the teenager was believed to have been trying to drive the electric car out of the garage on Luk Mei Tsuen R...
First, it was the Panama Canal, then came the Strait of Hormuz. What could be next? America’s actions in the two major shipping channels have grabbed headlines, and global attention is shifting to the strategic importance and potential risks of other critical trade waterways. Some of the chokepoints were examined in a US Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) investigation in March last year of unfavou...
Huawei Technologies has launched its first artificial intelligence glasses, as the Shenzhen-based tech giant joins an intensifying battle with US leader Meta and domestic peers including Alibaba Group Holding and Rokid in smart eyewear. Priced from 2,499 yuan (US$367), the new eyewear weighed just 35.5 grams and featured various AI functions ranging from voice interaction to payments, according to...
With global attention fixed on the US and Iranian shipping blockades in the Strait of Hormuz and how many vessels have traversed the critically important waterway, a leading Chinese investment bank has been calculating the long-term gains and losses and how they could rewrite the global economic order. The United States was on the horns of a dilemma over the strait that might herald an acceleratio...
Hong Kong’s food safety watchdog has urged people with gluten allergies not to eat a Marks & Spencer yoghurt product after the allergen was found but not declared on the label. The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) said on Monday night it was investigating the omission of gluten from the ingredients list of the supermarket’s authentic vanilla Greek yoghurt product. The affected batch, imported by Alf R...
Pro-Russian former President Rumen Radev has won Bulgaria’s parliamentary election by a landslide, official results showed on Monday, crushing long-dominant political forces and possibly pushing the EU and Nato member state closer to Moscow. The performance, exceeding opinion poll forecasts, is one of the strongest results for a single party in a generation and may end, for now, the chronic instab...
Several Taiwan business leaders on Monday urged the island’s government to consider Beijing’s new plan for boosting cross-strait exchanges, arguing it could ease pressure on struggling sectors. In response, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party accused industry groups of helping mainland China “use business to pressure politics”. “There is no pressure from Beijing. None of us received calls from...
Chinese Big Tech firms from Huawei Technologies’ spin-off Honor to Alibaba Group Holding are moving to the forefront of the country’s robotics push as Beijing seeks to spur growth in the sector. Honor, which separated from Huawei in 2020 to focus on smartphones and wearables and only expanded into robotics last year, emerged as the surprise gold medal winner at the second Beijing humanoid half-mar...
The chief of China’s top economic planner has outlined strategies and priorities to safeguard economic security, as Beijing reassesses its preparedness and vulnerabilities amid disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israeli war on Iran. Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), warned external risks were mounting and said China had to reinforce its st...
A public inquiry into Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades heard that authorities and representatives of Wang Fuk Court homeowners took no proactive steps against alleged vote rigging at the subsidised housing estate. Jason Kong Cheung-fat, a former management committee member of the owners’ corporation at Wang Fuk Court, said on Monday that the abuse of proxy votes was a long-standing problem th...
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s fourth visit to Beijing in four years has once again drawn attention across Europe and the Atlantic, but perhaps less scepticism than before. In an era marked by intensifying US-China rivalry, geopolitical fragmentation and the European Union’s emphasis on “de-risking”, Spain’s sustained engagement with China is often seen as a strategic divergence from Bruss...
China will hit EU firms with reciprocal measures if the bloc targets Chinese firms as planned under its proposed cybersecurity regulations, Beijing has warned. In a 30-page document submitted to the European Commission on Friday, China’s commerce ministry explicitly warned that broad retaliation was on the table if firms such as Huawei and ZTE were penalised by the law, which was announced in Janu...
Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation said on Monday that it had received eight bids for a commercial and residential development at one of the critical hubs in the Northern Metropolis, a large-scale project that aims to bolster the city’s economic base and foster closer integration with the Greater Bay Area. The number of bids for the Kam Sheung Road Station Phase Two property development exceeded expectat...
Pope Leo lamented during an event in Angola on Monday that many people in the world were being “exploited by authoritarians and defrauded by the rich”, the latest example of a forceful new speaking style he has adopted on his four-nation Africa tour. The first US pope, who has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump with his more outspoken comments, told worshippers at a Mass in Saurimo, near the...
A reported US pullback in intelligence-sharing with South Korea has exposed a new trust gap between the allies after Unification Minister Chung Dong-young publicly mentioned a suspected North Korean uranium-enrichment site. Washington viewed Chung’s remark as disclosing sensitive information about Kusong – a site long discussed in outside analyses, but not previously identified publicly by a South...
The number of inbound trips to Hong Kong by mainland Chinese visitors is expected to reach 980,000 for the coming Labour Day “golden week” holiday across the border, a 7 per cent increase from last year, with city authorities saying they will enforce environmental regulations around the clock at popular camping spots. The estimate from the Immigration Department on Monday came as the government re...
Chow Yun-fat, the legendary Hong Kong actor, has sold a Mid-Levels flat after more than three decades, securing a roughly 91 per cent gain, as the city’s secondary housing market continues to strengthen. The 541 sq ft, three-bedroom flat in Corona Tower fetched HK$7.5 million (US$960,000), or HK$13,863 per square foot. The sale agreement was signed on February 11 and the transaction was registered...
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and Douyin, saw its net profit plummet by more than 70 per cent in 2025 as it poured money into artificial intelligence, according to Chinese media reports. At the same time, revenue from overseas markets surged by nearly 50 per cent, far outpacing the roughly 20 per cent growth in China, according to reports on Monday by outlets including Securities Times a...
Government forces in the central Philippines have killed at least 10 Maoist guerrillas in several gun battles, the military said on Monday, in a deadly flare-up of the decades-old insurgency. Troops were fighting “remnants” of the New People’s Army (NPA) rebel group on Sunday near the municipality of Toboso on Negros island, the regional military command said. The exact number of dead rebels was u...
Government forces in the central Philippines have killed at least 10 Maoist guerrillas in several gun battles, the military said on Monday, in a deadly flare-up of the decades-old insurgency. Troops were fighting “remnants” of the New People’s Army (NPA) rebel group on Sunday near the municipality of Toboso on Negros island, the regional military command said. The exact number of dead rebels was u...
Hong Kong authorities have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven flood forecasting and alert system capable of three-dimensional simulations, aimed at enabling more timely pre-emptive measures and emergency responses to flooding. The technology is the latest addition to the existing territory-wide flood risk visualisation system, which was deployed during Super Typhoon Ragasa last year....
The Strait of Hormuz should remain open, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said in a phone call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. “The Strait of Hormuz should remain open for normal passage, which aligns with the common interest of countries in the region and the international community,” Xi said during Monday’s call. This marks the ...
The Strait of Hormuz should remain open, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a phone call with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday, China’s state broadcaster said. More to follow...
Russia said on Monday it had arrested a German woman found with a home-made bomb in her backpack in what it alleged was a Ukrainian-hatched plot to blow up a security services facility in the south. Russia has arrested dozens of people throughout the four-year war, mostly its own citizens, on allegations of working for Ukraine to carry out sabotage attacks. There has been a string of high-profile ...
Pakistan moved ahead on Monday with preparations for a new round of talks between the United States and Iran days before a tenuous ceasefire is set to expire, even as renewed conflict around the Strait of Hormuz raised questions about whether the meeting would take place. Over the weekend, the US attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel, known as the Touska, that it said had tried to ev...
A cautious reset in India-China relations is taking root, according to analysts, with the two rivals increasingly walling off their border disputes from expanding cooperation on trade, security and multilateral diplomacy. The clearest marker yet came last week in New Delhi, where the two sides held their first-ever bilateral consultations focused exclusively on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisatio...
A secondary teacher has been dubbed “China’s Superdad” for adopting nearly 300 parentless children over the past three decades. Bai Jian, 52, is a physical education (PE) teacher at Anshan No 2 Middle School, Liaoning province, northeastern China. He rents a big property to accommodate 20 to 30 children. Since 1995, at least 276 children have lived on the estate which is called Dream Home by Bai, ...
