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Recently, I joined Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah in Malaysia for the official opening of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Kuala Lumpur. The occasion marked an elevation in Hong Kong’s economic and trade ties with Malaysia and the broader Southeast Asian region. During the visit, Hong Kong’s Belt and Road Office hosted a forum that brought governmen...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was “happy” Prince Harry and his family left the US and relocated back to Britain. “I am happy about it. I was not a fan,” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked about the recent decision by Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to leave California after six years. The family arrived back in Britain at the end of August. The coupl...
The Dutch central bank said Wednesday it had moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves out of the US and Canada to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest.” The DNB bank said gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa. “This makes it the quickest for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation,” the bank said in a statement. “With this step, we have i...
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested renaming the Strait of Hormuz as “Trump Strait” despite the fact that the crucial waterway remains contested amid the war with Iran. “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” Trump said on social media. It is the latest geographic...
Vietnamese police arrested a deputy health minister on Wednesday for allegedly accepting huge bribes, part of an investigation into a company accused of smuggling medical equipment, authorities said. Vietnam has pursued a high-profile anti-corruption campaign in recent years that has netted dozens of business leaders and senior government figures. Deputy Health Minister Tran Van Thuan, a leading o...
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, said on Wednesday that an Iranian attack on an oil tanker owned by its national shipping company had killed two Filipino seafarers. Sidr, owned by Bahri, was one of two supertankers carrying Saudi oil reported to have been hit late on Monday while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has threatened tankers attempting to sail through the narrow...
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has issued its first dedicated declaration on nuclear safety and security, condemning attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities and outlining practical cooperation, amid tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme and wider questions of global nuclear governance. The document was adopted on Tuesday at the bloc’s 25th anniversary summit in Bishkek by leaders of all 10 ...
Israel has plans ready to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip but is waiting for the United States to figure out where to take them, the defence minister has said. “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference hosted by Israeli news site Ynet and newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday. The Israeli government “is organise...
Hong Kong authorities have arrested a man and woman from a clinic on suspicion of selling a laboratory reagent as a bogus vaccine against more than 20 types of cancer. The arrests followed a joint operation by the Department of Health and police, during which investigators raided 13 premises linked to the company, said Frank Chan Ling-fung, an assistant director of health who oversees drug matters...
Hong Kong authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in charge of a clinic accused of selling a laboratory reagent as a bogus vaccine against more than 20 types of cancer. The arrest followed a joint operation by the Department of Health and police, during which investigators raided 13 premises linked to the company, said Frank Chan Ling-fung, an assistant director of health who oversees drug mat...
Hong Kong authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in charge of a clinic accused of selling a laboratory reagent as an unapproved vaccine against more than 20 types of cancer. The arrest followed a joint operation by the Department of Health and police, during which investigators raided 13 premises linked to the company, said Frank Chan Ling-fung, an assistant director of health who oversees dr...
Hong Kong police have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing nearly HK$6,000 (US$765) in foreign currency while flying to the city from Thailand, with a passenger allegedly capturing the incident on camera and reporting it to cabin crew. The force said the 57-year-old man was arrested for the alleged theft after the HK Express flight landed in the city shortly before midnight on Wednesday. While ...
Singapore is positioning itself as a bridge between Central Asia and Asean, as both regions increasingly look to each other amid growing disruption to global trade and intensifying superpower rivalry. The political appetite exists, but analysts say trade benefits will still hinge on overcoming obstacles such as geography and a lack of connectivity. Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong pitch...
Oil giant Chevron confirmed that it would expand operations in Venezuela after US President Donald Trump announced an ambitious deal to develop the nation’s oil reserves and give the Pentagon a stake in the profits. Chevron, the only US oil company with a major presence in Venezuela, said on Wednesday that it had been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where it has active operations....
Oil giant Chevron confirmed that it would expand its operations in Venezuela, just days after President Donald Trump announced an ambitious deal to develop the nation’s oil reserves and give the Pentagon a stake in the profits. Chevron, the only US oil company that has a major presence in the country, said on Wednesday that it had been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where the com...
China’s science and technology minister Yin Hejun has called for global cooperation to manage the opportunities and risks posed by artificial intelligence, as Beijing and Washington face renewed trade and tech tensions ahead of a planned meeting between their leaders later this month. Speaking at the G20 Innovation Ministerial Meeting held in the United States, Yin said the development of AI and o...
As China and Russia rallied dozens of countries in Bishkek to shape a multipolar world order, Washington’s envoys were splitting the spotlight by meeting several Central Asian presidents in the Kyrgyz capital this week. The manoeuvring showed that the US was likely to continue its outreach to the region and seek to blunt Beijing’s influence, but it would be “unrealistic” for Washington to force Ce...
China is beginning to match its economic presence abroad with the military reach required to operate across it. The clearest evidence came from Egypt. Chinese J-16 fighters flew there recently, supported by YU-20 tankers that refuelled them in the air. The Chinese jets are taking part in Egypt’s “Eagles of Civilisation” alongside Egyptian Rafales and MiG-29s. This is the first time China has sent ...
About 1.4 million students in six Indonesian provinces had shifted to online learning due to poor air quality triggered by forest and land fires, an official said on Wednesday. As of September 2, around 1.43 million students from 12,874 schools in six of the provinces hit hardest by forest and land fires had been studying remotely, Gogot Suharwoto, an education ministry official, told the media...
Aptly dubbed the Pinglu 001, the first command and management vessel for the Pinglu Canal was delivered on Monday and will soon enter service as China prepares to open the strategic waterway designed to support surging trade with Southeast Asia. The delivery marks one of the final steps before the 72.7 billion yuan (US$10.8 billion) megaproject is expected to officially open later this month after...
Japan’s plans to transfer ageing warships to the Philippines and Indonesia could turn older military hardware into geopolitical leverage, deepening regional security ties while helping Tokyo counterbalance Beijing’s growing influence, observers say. Such transfers, they said, fit into Tokyo’s broader security assistance toolkit to strengthen partners’ capabilities and forge longer-term defence rel...
Hong Kong education authorities have reminded a school to consider the needs of students when enforcing rules after many were forced to wait in a long line outside the campus in the rain to have their uniforms and hair checked on the first day of the new academic year. The Education Bureau also made a similar call to another school, where students deemed to have failed with hair grooming rules wer...
Hong Kong customs has arrested a man and seized HK$42 million (US$5.3 million) worth of the illegal narcotic “space oil” from a drug workshop fitted with a semi-automated production line capable of producing up to 160,000 cartridges in a short period. Senior investigator Chan Kit-lun of the Customs and Excise Department’s drug investigation bureau said officers intercepted a suspicious man on Tues...
Hong Kong customs has arrested a man and seized HK$42 million (US$5.3 million) worth of the illegal narcotic “space oil” from a drug workshop fitted with a semi-automated production line capable of producing up to 160,000 cartridges in a short period. Senior investigator Chan Kit-lun of the Customs and Excise Department’s drug investigation bureau said officers intercepted a suspicious man on Tues...
Hong Kong customs officers have arrested a woman for allegedly using aggressive tactics to sell skincare products at a local beauty chain formerly operating under the Opatra London brand, bringing the number of arrests in the case to three, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source said the saleswoman, who is in her twenties, was suspected of pressuring a customer into making purchases at...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian leader Masoud Pezeshkian at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit have put the spotlight on New Delhi’s ability to mediate major conflicts. Positioned between Russia and the West, and with working ties across rival camps in the Middle East, India is seen by some analysts as a potent...
– Ireland needs to be prepared for a vote on whether to reunify with the UK’s Northern Ireland region, Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee has said. “I do believe that there will be a border poll at some stage,” McEntee told reporters in Wicklow, Ireland, ahead of a European Union foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday. “It is for the people of Northern Ireland to decide this and it is only where...
Anthropic’s powerful new Claude Fable 5.1 model has widened its lead in performance benchmarks over Chinese rivals, even as budget-friendly open-weight models from China continue to gain commercial traction globally. The American company said on Wednesday that Fable 5.1, along with a restricted-access version called Mythos 5.1, was the world’s most advanced model for software coding and complex kn...
As the US resumes strikes on Iran to force an end to the six-month-old war, Tehran is turning to multilateral groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Brics for political and diplomatic cover. At the SCO summit in Bishkek on Tuesday, world leaders made veiled references to the instability in the Middle East without naming the United States directly, in apparent tacit backing ...
As the US resumes strikes on Iran to force an end to the six-month-old war, Tehran is turning to multilateral groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Brics for political and diplomatic cover. At the SCO summit in Bishkek on Tuesday, world leaders made veiled references to the instability in the Middle East, without naming the United States directly, in apparent tacit backing...
