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A rare rebuke of Asean by the powerful sister of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un signals the bloc’s waning relevance to the nuclear-armed state, analysts say. Kim Yo-jong on Monday condemned a call by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for the country’s denuclearisation, saying the statement “distorted the essence of the situation in the Korean peninsula”. At the annual Asean Regional Forum...
Singapore authorities said on Monday they had arrested three teenagers over separate plots to carry out shooting, stabbing and bomb attacks, warning of the threat of “youth radicalisation” in the security-conscious city state. The three boys, detained between April and June, had been “self-radicalised” online, adopting violent extremist ideologies, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said. They...
Iran and the United States held their fire on Monday, handing Gulf shipping and the oil industry a respite from missile strikes as Donald Trump’s UN envoy said the president was “giving talks some space”. Tehran said it had halted retaliatory attacks against Washington’s allies in the Middle East, and US ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told Fox News Sunday that, while forces remained “...
A Hong Kong academic has used environmental DNA technology to detect the critically endangered Chinese bahaba – commonly known as the “Tai O fish” – in local waters for the first time in more than a decade. Jack Ip Chi-ho, an assistant professor at Lingnan University’s division of science, co-led the study with Wang Junjie, a professor at South China Normal University in mainland China. Together, ...
South Asia is undergoing a gradual but important shift. Smaller states now command a widening array of options, and India’s primacy is quietly giving way. The lesson is clear. Regional leadership can no longer rest on geography and must be sustained through credible and mutually beneficial engagements that compare favourably with the alternatives. China’s challenge begins at India’s border. Both c...
Taipei mayor Wayne Chiang Wan-an has emerged as the biggest political winner from an opposition protest against the government’s handling of a food safety scandal that drew what organisers said were more than 200,000 people onto the streets of the city. The unexpectedly large turnout appears to have given the island’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, fresh momentum ahead of the local electio...
French police detained a man on Monday after he attacked three women with knives near Porte de Clichy in Paris, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters. The man attacked the three women, who were aged 19, 24 and 36, with two kitchen knives, severely wounding two of them, Nunez said. Video aired on social media and verified by Reuters showed a man with long black hair, wearing a cream tra...
A French off-duty policeman on Monday detained a man after he allegedly attacked and wounded three women with two kitchen knives in Paris, a minister and police said. Three women aged 19, 24 and 36 were taken to hospital after the assault at around 11.30am in the Porte de Clichy area in the north of the capital, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez and Paris police said. Two were gravely wounded, but t...
US criticism of Malaysia’s entry ban on Israeli nationals is unlikely to force a major shift in the country’s foreign policy, analysts have said, after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim rejected accusations that the move was antisemitic. The remarks escalated a dispute that has drawn in members of the US Congress, Malaysia’s long-standing refusal to recognise Israel and the widening international debat...
The Ministry of Commerce has objected to Washington’s latest tariff on Chinese goods but signalled it will hold off on retaliation for now, noting the 12.5 per cent duty keeps the United States within the ceiling that the Trump administration promised in earlier talks. Washington was manipulating the issue of forced labour, the ministry said in a statement on Monday, calling the Section 301 invest...
Hong Kong should prepare for stronger storms and a warmer, wetter winter this year as the current El Nino phenomenon is likely to intensify into a super event, a local green group and a leading meteorologist have said. Typhoons heading for Hong Kong this year were set to grow more powerful, as El Nino raised sea temperatures and provided storms with more moisture and energy, Friends of the Earth (...
Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung has told a Hong Kong High Court judge to retire early after reprimanding him for plagiarising submissions in a judgment, describing a series of such incidents as undermining public confidence. The city’s top judge said on Monday that Wilson Chan Ka-shun’s repeated judicial plagiarism had adversely affected the interests of the parties concerned, imposed an unne...
Alleged scam-network mastermind Chen Zhi could face the death penalty, with Chinese prosecutors adding intentional injury to the list of charges against him. Chen, 38, was extradited from Cambodia to China six months ago and formally arrested on July 6, according to Chinese business magazine Caixin. He founded the Cambodian conglomerate Prince Group, which authorities say was linked to a sprawling...
Former Hong Kong opposition leader Wu Chi-wai has been granted permission to enter and remain in Britain as a visitor for six months, after UK authorities reversed an earlier decision requiring him to leave the country by Wednesday, the South China Morning Post has learned. Paul Harris, Wu’s lawyer, said immigration authorities had informed his legal team in writing that the former chairman of the...
Former Hong Kong opposition leader Wu Chi-wai has appealed against the UK government’s decision to grant him only seven days’ temporary admission, requiring him to leave the country by Wednesday, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source said on Monday that Wu had written to the British Home Office asking it to reconsider the decision and could potentially seek a judicial review if the ap...
Residents and visitors in Hong Kong can enjoy discounts on dining, shopping, and attractions in August by presenting tickets for five major events, including an exhibition, as authorities seek to boost the retail and catering sectors. The Hong Kong Tourism Board announced on Monday that ticket holders for the selected events in the city would be able to enjoy 5 per cent discounts at more than 100 ...
Germany’s drive to compete with Chinese imports is colliding with its long-standing tradition of Sunday rest, with policymakers and retailers now asking whether a century-old consensus still fits an economy struggling to regain its competitiveness. The latest flashpoint came in early July, when the country’s coalition government unveiled a package of measures to boost Germany’s competitiveness, in...
China’s major chip manufacturers saw their profits skyrocket a staggering 2,579.5 per cent in the first half of 2026, fuelled by unprecedented demand for artificial intelligence and computing power, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday. The state agency attributed the surge to accelerated integration of AI across various fields, which in turn generated massive d...
The Chinese aesthetic practice of wo you, which literally translates to “travelling while lying down,” is an artistic tradition that merges Taoism and Confucianism, enduring for centuries and now embraced by younger generations as a symbol of slow living. The term was originally coined by the 5th-century Chinese painter Zong Bing. Zong had a love for travel in his youth, but as he aged and fell il...
A Singapore fitness instructor linked to former acting minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs Faishal Ibrahim’s resignation has denied rumours that she was the woman with whom he had inappropriate interactions. Rasidah Caudal told This Week in Asia on Monday that she had filed a complaint with Singapore’s Online Safety Commission, which helps people deal with online harms such as doxxing and harassm...
Five young Pallas’s cats, dubbed the world’s grumpiest feline for their sullen facial expressions, went on display at a zoo in Japan on Thursday. Kobe Animal Kingdom put the four males and one female, all born in May at the facility, on public viewing last week. The animals are believed to be one of the oldest living cat species and are native to the dry, rocky areas of Central Asia. They are not...
Hong Kong exports rose 53.4 per cent year on year in June, their sharpest increase in 42 years, to a record HK$641.1 billion on strong overseas demand for AI-related products. Provisional figures released by the Census and Statistics Department on Monday showed that the total value of exports climbed to HK$641.1 billion (US$81.7 billion) last month, after a 40.8 per cent surge in May. The last tim...
A second suspect detained in connection with a deadly car-ramming attack on Berlin’s Pride celebrations over the weekend has been released, the German federal prosecutors’ office said on Monday. “We continue to investigate broadly,” the prosecutors’ office told Reuters and declined to comment further. Spiegel on Monday cited sources as saying that authorities released the person because init...
Beijing has stepped up its global messaging campaign over East China Sea islets that Tokyo also claims by rolling out a five-part documentary to tell its version of history, as the countries’ relationship continues to be fraught. The state broadcaster’s English-language channel, China Global Television Network (CGTN), released the first part of Diaoyu Dao: Small Islands, Big Stakes on Monday to “e...
Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority (URA) received seven tender submissions for a major waterfront residential redevelopment project in Hung Hom, drawing bids from some of the city’s largest developers despite a subdued land market. The authority said on Monday that seven developers submitted tenders for the project before the noon deadline. A tender review panel under the URA board will assess th...
In the first half of this year, investment in Hong Kong commercial real estate reached HK$24.1 billion (US$3.1 billion), up 56 per cent in annualised terms, according to CBRE data. The education industry was a crucial source of demand, generating HK$10 billion worth of transactions, with many of these deals involving assets for conversion into student housing. At a time when the living sector – wh...
Malaysia has won a small victory in Washington’s tariff wars, securing a 10 per cent rate that leaves it better placed than four of its Southeast Asian neighbours in the scramble for US orders. Economists warn the narrow advantage may prove fleeting, however, as it hinges on Kuala Lumpur fulfilling its promised trade reforms. The new duties, which fall under Section 301 of the US Trade Act and too...
Indonesian police are investigating the unexplained death of a man whom local media reported managed the household of detained former anti-corruption prosecutor Febrie Adriansyah, adding a new layer of scrutiny to one of the country’s most sensitive corruption cases. The man, identified only as Sutrimo, was found unconscious on Thursday on the grounds of Mordent Beauty Clinic in Kebayoran Baru, So...
Many of China’s private firms continue to face tough operating conditions, including intense market competition, persistent payment delays and weak domestic demand, though technology firms have shown stronger momentum, according to fresh survey results. The recent survey of 79 entrepreneurs from medium- and large-sized private firms found that more than 70 per cent of respondents described their c...
A South Korean court on Monday sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, after finding him guilty of violating the election law by making false statements during his 2022 presidential campaign. The sentence, if upheld through appeals, could force Yoon’s People Power Party to return 39.7 billion won (US$27.1 million) in election expenses reimbur...
