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Aeons before Hong Kong and Shenzhen became bustling metropolises separated by borders and checkpoints, the lands that would become these two cities were part of the same volcanic area in southeastern China. Fast forward to today, and that shared ancient history has become the architectural inspiration for the revamped Huanggang Port. Nestling amid towering skyscrapers, the 60-by-200-metre rounded,...
In June 1958, as China’s Great Leap Forward campaign gained traction, state media began reporting astronomical agricultural yields, including claims from central Henan province of over 3,000 jin per mu – more than 22 tonnes per hectare. That month, scientist Qian Xuesen, father of China’s rocket programme, published theoretical calculations on maximum solar energy conversion during crop photosynth...
In America today, many low-income workers and households can’t get adequate healthcare or pay for food. Depending on who you ask, medical costs are the number one cause or at least among the top causes of bankruptcy for families. This is despite the United States spending more on healthcare per capita than any developed economy within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and ...
Hong Kong octogenarian Chan Yiu-kuen is ready to let death take its course when the time comes. The 89-year-old said she would sign an advance medical directive to clearly indicate which life-sustaining treatments she would not want if she became terminally ill. “It is OK to depart the world at my old age. Better not to rescue me further, as it could be hard for me,” said Chan, who is mentally cap...
China has given a rare acknowledgement that it has built more nuclear missile silos in recent years, with state television airing a documentary on the construction programme. In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV, Cui Daohu, an officer with a PLA Rocket Force engineering unit, described his contribution to building the missile positions that he called China’s “strategic trump cards”, saying ...
Pakistan and Bangladesh are entering the latest phase of the US-Iran conflict with thinner cushions than many Asian economies, raising the risk that another oil shock could quickly spill into higher food, transport and electricity costs for millions of people, analysts have said. Both economies rely heavily on imported fuel, leaving them particularly vulnerable to any prolonged spike in oil and di...
British singer Boy George has pulled out of a West End production of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar after facing a backlash for releasing a pro-Israel song, We Will Dance Again. The 65-year-old musician “will no longer be appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar at the London Palladium”, his manager Paul Kemsley said on social media. The singer, whose real name is George Alan O’Dowd, rose to fame i...
In a bid to defend its market share against rapidly advancing, lower-cost Chinese rivals, US artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has launched an aggressive price war, slashing prices for its latest GPT-5.6 model line-up by up to 80 per cent. In a post on social media platform X on Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced an 80 per cent drop in developer pricing for its lightweight GPT-5.6 Luna mo...
British publication The Economist has come under fire across social media for calling China an “eco-authoritarian” state over its Yangtze River fishing ban, with some users calling out the outlet for its use of the “but at what cost” trope. In a piece published on July 27, the publication outlined China’s efforts to restore Asia’s longest waterway, which has experienced decades of environmental de...
The European Union rolled out a new team on Friday to rein in AI companies across the world, in one of the most aggressive regulations the hi-tech sector has so far faced as fears rise over the risks the rapidly advancing technology poses to people, politics and prosperity. Brussels aims to track the use of AI models for violations of its new regulations, like the publishing of sexually explicit m...
Malaysia’s shift towards an older society is accelerating, as children make up a shrinking share of the population and older people a growing one, raising difficult questions over who will work, pay taxes and provide care in the decades ahead. Children aged 14 and below made up 21.2 per cent of the population in 2026, down from 21.6 per cent a year earlier, according to official figures released b...
A senior Hong Kong police officer has been sentenced to jail for nearly six months for molesting a subordinate on three occasions at the force’s headquarters two years ago. West Kowloon Court on Friday sentenced Senior Superintendent Ian Chow Ngai-kong for flouting the law with his “brazen” and “disrespectful” assaults on the government clerk on June 19 and November 1, 2024. The 51-year-old defend...
Chinese AI firm MiniMax has launched H3, its newest multimodal video generation model, pledging to break closed-source “dominance” through open weights and competitive pricing – as rival ByteDance rolls out its latest Seedance 2.5 model. H3 was currently the world’s most powerful AI model in video editing, according to benchmark platform Artificial Analysis. However, it trailed Google’s Gemini Omn...
Elon Musk has dismissed a media report claiming electric vehicle (EV) company Tesla is considering selling its China business, even as the speculation threatens to renew scrutiny over the American carmaker’s dependence on its main manufacturing hub in Shanghai. “This has never even come up in a discussion ever,” Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla and commercial aerospace giant SpaceX, posted on his X ...
Japanese F-35A stealth fighters are flying training missions over Australia for the first time in Exercise Pitch Black – part of a broader defence pivot that experts say could bolster US and allied resilience against Beijing in a Taiwan contingency. The multinational exercise, held every two years and featuring around 100 aircraft, runs from July 20 to August 7. It comes just days after Japanese, ...
A young survivor of a catastrophic train collision 15 years ago has grown up to become a volunteer who gives hope to many inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients like her. Mengjun, 28, was diagnosed with IBD when she was graduating from senior secondary school. She said she was the “one unlucky person in 30,000” in China. She also has a more breathtaking identity: a survivor of the devastating 2...
Singaporean Jo Teoh has spent over three decades waking up to birdsong, the rustle of leaves as macaques jump through trees, and the lingering smell of damp earth. Much of her time living in the western estate of Sunset Way revolves around the adjacent forest, where she and her family watch hornbills glide over the canopy. “The neighbourhood lives with the forest,” said the media producer, 68. “It...
Last Thursday, the European Union added 14 Chinese companies to its latest round of sanctions, accusing them of providing support for Russia’s war against Ukraine – but few of the names were recognisable to anyone outside narrow trading and compliance circles. Officials were taken aback less than 24 hours later, when Beijing – which had been notified of the ragtag group of traders and freight forw...
China’s factory activity unexpectedly slipped into contraction for the first time in five months, and construction activity fell to its lowest since the pandemic, underscoring a divide in the nation’s economy that complicates efforts to revive growth. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 49.2 in July, missing the 50.1 median estimate in a Bloomberg poll of economi...
Hong Kong’s economy expanded by 4.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, with the government expecting “solid growth” to continue for the remainder of the year. A government spokesman on Friday attributed the robust momentum to buoyant external trade and resilient domestic demand. “Looking ahead, the Hong Kong economy should continue to post solid growth in the second half of 2026,” he said. “V...
Singapore announced on Friday it took possession of 38 Oxley Road, the former home of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, and would study how it could be developed into a public space, ending years of public debate over what to do with the property amid a family feud among the late leader’s children. In the interim, necessary maintenance works would be carried out as required, and th...
HSBC Holdings has agreed to sell its US$25 billion Australian home loan portfolio to a unit of Blackstone, which is expected to result in an immaterial pre-tax loss of less than US$100 million for the group by the first half of 2027, according to a stock exchange filing on Friday. The sale price was based on the portfolio’s value of A$36 billion (US$25 billion) as at the end of January, plus a pre...
Not a day passes without someone in Europe or the United States complaining about China’s “overproduction” and “China shock 2.0”. The narrative is of a deliberate, subversive Chinese strategy, underpinned by subsidies, to undermine the manufacturing economies of the West and exert economic hegemony worldwide. Inaccurate as the narrative may be, it is widely accepted and used to justify demands for...
Students sitting Hong Kong’s university entrance exam in mainland China next year will pay a registration fee of HK$8,000 (US$1,020), a 220 per cent increase from the current HK$2,500 after a pilot scheme ends. The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) announced the fee adjustments for various exams on Friday, adding that local students would face a 4 per cent increase to sit eac...
Students sitting Hong Kong’s university entrance exam in mainland China next year will pay a registration fee of HK$8,000 (US$1,020), a 220 per cent increase from the current HK$2,500 after a pilot scheme ends. Announcing the fee increase for various exams on Friday, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) also said local students would face a 4 per cent increase to sit each su...
Chinese President Xi Jinping held discussions with the leaders of Slovakia and Namibia in Beijing during July, as well as meeting the heads of Cambodia, Thailand and Kazakhstan in Shanghai on the sidelines of the World AI Conference. Xi also hosted North Korean Premier Pak Thae‑song in Beijing following his state visit and meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June. So far this year, Xi ...
A powerful earthquake that struck southern Japan this week has exposed the vulnerability of the country’s manufacturing supply chains, a decade after a devastating quake in the same region triggered widespread industry disruption. Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude quake claimed at least 34 lives, ruptured roads and cut off utilities to thousands of households. It also brought factories to a halt in an area ...
A super typhoon named after Hong Kong’s Chinese white dolphins is set to bring very hot weather to the city in the latter part of next week, according to the Observatory. Super Typhoon Dolphin, currently over the western North Pacific, is expected to move towards the waters south of Japan in the next few days, although its subsequent trajectory remains uncertain, the forecaster’s senior scientific...
Hong Kong authorities have backtracked on plans to require hotels to provide fire escape hoods in guest rooms and other spaces after industry leaders expressed concerns, and have said they will only encourage the equipment’s usage at this stage. The Home Affairs Department said on Thursday evening that it would only encourage the supply of fire escape hoods in rooms for now, following a meeting wi...
A Malaysian pilot who tested positive for meth, MDMA, and cocaine after flying a passenger plane to Indonesia risked the death penalty for allegedly smuggling more than 70,000 Ecstasy tablets in his suitcase, officials said on Friday. The 39-year-old pilot, identified only by his initials, MSO, was arrested on Wednesday at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport shortly after arriving from ...
