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The much-anticipated revamped Huanggang Port, expected to open later this year, should be seen as more than a story about faster clearance. Its deeper significance lies in a question that deserves wider discussion: if border functions can be redesigned, where should border control actually operate? Living in the Greater Bay Area, where people and businesses move across administrative boundaries ev...
Colombia’s new housing minister has come under fire after it emerged that he took his family on a Caribbean holiday while the country was reeling from a devastating earthquake that left thousands homeless. The August 10 earthquake, which killed nearly 300 people in western Colombia, struck just three days after right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella took office. The 7.4-magnitude tremor was...
AI desktop pets are gaining popularity in China, offering young workers an outlet for workplace frustration and providing bereaved owners with a digital means to preserve memories of their deceased pets. Virtual pets first emerged on messaging platforms in the early 2000s, roaming across screens and interacting with users as they browsed the web, chatted, or watched videos. Advancements in AI are ...
Hong Kong infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) firms are well placed to capitalise on a surge of expansion opportunities in Malaysia, but unlocking this potential will require cultural sensitivity and adapting to local market dynamics, industry insiders have said. The remarks follow the recent opening of Hong Kong’s new Economic and Trade Office in Kuala Lumpur to bolster bilateral ties...
Indonesia’s next electric-vehicle push will test whether President Prabowo Subianto can turn rising demand, nickel wealth and consumer subsidies into an integrated domestic industry that captures more value at home, or merely make imported and locally assembled EVs cheaper to buy. Analysts warn that without stricter local-content rules and stronger links between nickel processing, battery producti...
The US diesel crack, a key measure of refining profitability, hit an all-time high of US$102.20 a barrel on Monday as global supply disruptions from the wars in Iran and Ukraine run into peak agricultural consumption season. Measured as the premium of US diesel futures over US West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, the US diesel crack was trading at US$99.82 a barrel, up 2.4 per cent from Fri...
The Hong Kong property market’s recovery is forecast to moderate in both prices and rents in the coming months as disruptions brought about by artificial intelligence, slower population inflows and other factors are likely to impact the upturn, according to UBS. The Swiss investment bank said that in addition to AI and slower population growth, the city’s residential market could also be affected ...
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would not seek to extend the memorandum of understanding with Iran, claiming that while Iran wants to make a deal, “they’re not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary”. The agreement aimed to end the war and restore commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global energy chokepoint, but negotiations stalled as bo...
Moscow said on Monday it had summoned the Japanese ambassador after Tokyo condemned President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Russia’s far-eastern Kuril Islands, which are also claimed by Japan. Russian-Japanese relations have long been dogged by the contested islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories and seized by the Soviet Union in 1945. Putin, 73, travelled to the islands after visi...
Speculation is growing that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is at increasing risk of losing his job, raising questions about the possible implications for US-China relations, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly, said Hegseth was “on the verge of losing his job”. They cite...
There is something about the speed of consensus on China’s rocket failures that should give us pause. Within hours of Long March-7A rocket’s disintegration over the South China Sea on August 10, trade reports were pointing to an engine as the likely culprit. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) had said nothing of the kind. An official Xinhua report about three hours after...
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa arrived in Beijing on Sunday for his first state visit to China, an eight-day trip during which he will seek to lift suspensions on 14 Ecuadorian shrimp processors and secure fresh investment in energy and mining. Noboa will hold talks with President Xi Jinping and meet separately with Premier Li Qiang and Zhao Leji, China’s top legislator, according to Beijing’s ...
Thousands of people gathered in central London late on Monday to hold a vigil for black academic Jason Arday, blaming racism and relentless media pressure for his death last week. The vigil in central Trafalgar Square came as the head of Cambridge University on Monday condemned a “racist feeding frenzy” prompted by plagiarism claims against Arday. Arday, who became Cambridge’s youngest black profe...
US President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to the lowest level of his presidency with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the US war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday. Just 33 per cent of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved of Trump’s performance in the White House, while 64 per cent disapproved. Trump’s...
Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead in an act of gang revenge ordered by a mobster who later boasted of it, jurors heard on Monday, as one of America’s most anticipated trials got under way, 30 years after the murder. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, one of a patchwork of gangs that ran parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s, ordered the killing after his nephew h...
Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead in an act of gang revenge ordered by a mobster who later boasted of it, jurors heard on Monday, as one of America’s most anticipated trials got under way, 30 years after the murder. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, one of a patchwork of gangs that ran parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s, ordered the killing after his nephew h...
The theft of four paintings by Renaissance master Antonello da Messina may have involved organised crime and raised troubling questions about security at a museum in the Sicilian artist’s hometown, a local official said on Monday. Enzo Caruso, Messina’s councillor for culture, said it was difficult to understand how thieves could have removed the works in a matter of minutes without detailed kno...
Nvidia has agreed to guarantee as much as US$105 billion in lease payments to help OpenAI secure a sprawling data centre in Ohio being developed by SoftBank-backed SB Energy, in one of the chipmaker’s largest infrastructure financing commitments. The chip giant will also invest US$1.5 billion in SB Energy and secure up to 8 gigawatts of AI computing capacity at the site, where the data centre ...
A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison in the latest crackdown leading up to next month’s parliamentary election. The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbour...
New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone posing as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, several media outlets reported on Monday. According to Politico, which broke the story quoting anonymous sources, the British leader sent a “few messages” via an unspecified communication channel to a person he believed to be Wiles before becoming suspicious. The incident ...
The Pentagon has ordered 30 US universities to conduct sweeping audits of their foreign research partnerships, including collaborations with Chinese institutions and organisations associated with former Confucius Institutes, or risk becoming ineligible for future federal funding. The Department of Defence said on Monday that the unnamed universities must review their academic, financial and resear...
Since Chinese container ships began plying the Northern Sea Route three years ago, the Arctic shipping lane has gained global importance. Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea later that year disrupted traffic through the Suez Canal – the fastest route between Europe and Asia – in what was the most serious conflict-driven disruption since the Arab-Israeli war nearly six decades earli...
UK-based beauty chain Opatra London has distanced itself from a Hong Kong distributor accused of using “deceptive sales practices”, even after the local branch said it offered to refund about a quarter of a HK$60,000 (US$7,650) shopping bill on skincare products. The company said on Monday night that it deeply regretted if any customers had a “distressing experience associated with our brand”, and...
Three people have been shot dead in a suspected revenge attack linked to the drug trade in southwestern Spain, the authorities in the Andalusia region said on Monday. The three victims were a pregnant woman in her eighth month of pregnancy, a 62-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy. The unborn child also did not survive, the authorities said, adding that two other people were injured in the attack...
President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of a US deal with Iran on the Strait of Hormuz and called for Iran to surrender. “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News journalist Trey Yingst, referring to ongoing talks between Oman and Iran on control of the strait, while Washington is also pursuing its own talks. Iranian an...
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) has extended the tenure of CEO Bonnie Chan Yiting for another three years amid the bourse’s aggressive push to enhance its international competitiveness. The tenure of the 57-year-old Chan, the first woman to serve as CEO of the city’s exchange operator, will be renewed from March 1, 2027, to February 28, 2030, according to an exchange filing on Monday eveni...
The US Supreme Court on Monday again rebuffed President Donald Trump’s push to throw out a jury’s US$5 million finding that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. The Republican president’s lawyers had asked the justices to reconsider their refusal to hear his appeal. It is unusual – although not unheard of – for th...
The artificial intelligence boom is driving demand for optical modules that enable ultra-fast data transmission in data centres, with the latest beneficiary a chemical compound that is seeing an unprecedented surge in prices. Indium phosphide (InP) is used to make lasers that convert electrical signals into light, allowing data to travel rapidly through fibre-optic cables. As a major producer of t...
The iconic wrapper of White Rabbit, a six-decade-old Chinese milk confectionery, has recently gone viral in the West. Shared this month in a post on X, formerly Twitter, the retro packaging was hailed as an “absolute masterstroke of graphic design”. Its distinctive waxy paper – featuring a white rabbit against a red circle, with blue-and-white rabbit motifs lining both edges – has since racked up ...
We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering US-China relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. US-China ‘Board of Investment’ stalls before expected Trump-Xi meeting The US-China Board of Investment, one of the key outcomes of the May summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese...
