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Joseph Chang Yanfeng was ordained bishop of Chifeng in China’s northern Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Wednesday, highlighting the uneasy diplomatic engagement between Beijing and the Vatican on the sensitive issue of Catholic appointments. According to Vatican News, Pope Leo XIV approved Chang’s appointment on June 15, under the terms of the 2018 provisional agreement between the Holy See an...
Kozo Okamoto, the Japanese militant who took part in a deadly attack on Tel Aviv’s airport more than five decades ago, died on Thursday in Beirut, the Palestinian group that had been protecting him said. He was 78. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a faction that is the second-largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that Okamoto had been ill for a long time. O...
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet pledged to step up a crackdown on transnational online scam networks, but warned the criminal syndicates were adapting by fracturing into smaller, decentralised cells across the region. Authorities had already shut down more than 670 illegal scam operations while expanding intelligence sharing with key international law enforcement partners, he said, including du...
Simon Johnson is a professor of entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he won a joint Nobel Prize for economics in 2024 for his research into how institutions shape national prosperity. On June 8, the British government announced Johnson as chair of its new AI Economics Institute. In this interview, co...
A potent cocktail of domestic and international political headwinds continues to weigh on the Philippines’ economic recovery, even as inflation eased in June. Economists point to turmoil in the Senate and a recent corruption scandal that rocked the nation as internal shackles holding back an already fragile economy reeling from energy shocks and extreme weather. Dutch financial think tank ING said...
Laura Loomer, an ardent ally of US President Donald Trump with a reputation for incendiary social media commentary, sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday after a dramatic turnaround on the war that could have political reverberations back in Washington. Loomer had spent years minimising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amplifying Russian propaganda to her nearly 2 millio...
Hong Kong could see more monkey encounters during the animals’ mating season, an expert has said, after one was spotted on MTR tracks for a second day in a row. The MTR Corporation, the city’s rail operator, said staff found a monkey loitering near Tsuen Wan station at about 9am on Friday and informed police and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. Services on the Tsuen Wan Line...
A monkey caused fresh disruption to Hong Kong’s rail services on Friday morning after it was spotted on the tracks in Tsuen Wan station, a day after a similar incident during peak hours. At 10.03am, the MTR Corporation said services on the Tsuen Wan line had to be adjusted after a monkey entered the track area, advising passengers to allow extra time for their journeys. A photo released by the rai...
HSBC has agreed to sell its Singapore life and health insurance business to Germany’s Allianz for S$2.7 billion (US$2.08 billion), with the deal expected to be completed in the first half of 2027, HSBC Group announced on Friday morning before the start of trading. The disposal is expected to generate a pre-tax gain of US$1.8 billion and boost HSBC’s common equity tier 1 ratio by up to 15 basis poi...
Severe Tropical Storm Noul is expected to come closest to Hong Kong between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to the city’s weather forecaster, which issued the No 1 typhoon warning signal on Friday evening. The Hong Kong Observatory issued the signal at 8.40pm. The severe tropical storm near the Philippines was officially named Noul. The name, provided by North Korea, means “glowing cr...
Severe Tropical Storm Noul is expected to come closest to Hong Kong between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to the city’s weather forecaster, which will issue the No 1 typhoon warning signal on Friday evening. The Hong Kong Observatory said the signal would be issued at 8.40pm. The severe tropical storm near the Philippines was officially named Noul. The name, provided by North Korea,...
Typhoon Noul is expected to come closest to Hong Kong between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to the city’s weather forecaster, which will issue the No 1 warning signal on Friday evening. The Hong Kong Observatory said that signal would be issued at 8.40pm. The tropical storm near the Philippines was officially named Typhoon Noul. The name, provided by North Korea, means “glowing crim...
Typhoon Noul is expected to come closest to Hong Kong between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to the city’s weather forecaster, which is considering issuing the No 1 warning signal later on Friday. The tropical storm near the Philippines was officially named Typhoon Noul. The name, provided by North Korea, means “glowing crimson skies”. As of Friday morning, Noul was about 500km (310 ...
Australia said on Friday it would pump an additional US$3.2 billion into building the country’s nuclear-powered submarines, part of a controversial defence pact with the United States and Britain. Under the 2021 Aukus deal, Australia’s most expensive defence project, the country will receive three nuclear-powered submarines from the United States. Australia and Britain will then build a new class ...
Almost two years after six travellers died and one survivor was left blind from suspected methanol-tainted drinks in Laos, the criminal case over the incident is finally proceeding with charges filed against a distillery owner as families of the victims continue to demand answers and stern punishment. Last Friday, the owner of the distillery where the drinks linked to the deaths were thought to ha...
Officials talking about artificial intelligence (AI) often speak in terms of the next industrial revolution or existential risks. Such rhetoric ultimately does little to capture how AI filters into the ordinary workings of a city like Hong Kong. The geopolitics of AI are no longer abstract. They are beginning to shape who can use which tools – and on what terms. Over the past few months, two major...
Two Chinese nationals pleaded guilty to shipping more than 500 turtles to Hong Kong in violation of American wildlife law, the US Department of Justice said on Thursday. Kin Keung Ho pleaded guilty on Thursday while Lihua Owen Ma pleaded guilty to a similar charge on July 1. Both are residents of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City. “During the plea hearing, the government pro...
A Chinese man suffered from vision loss after over a thousand mites infected his eyes, and it turned out that his life habits were to blame. The 36-year-old man in central Hubei province, surnamed Yu, experienced eye discomfort. His eyes felt dry, itchy and sticky for six months. He rubbed his eyes more vigorously, and bought eye drops, but they did not help. He then experienced a sharp decline in...
China’s A-share market has seen another high-profile divorce case result in a massive asset split, involving the transfer of 6 billion yuan (US$886 million) – the highest this year – and raising concerns over corporate governance stability and share price fluctuations. Although the scope of the divorce settlement is not at all comparable to that of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, it has made tens of tho...
China has unveiled its latest ambitious space-based computing network designed to process satellite data in orbit using AI before sending the results to Earth. Xingshu, or “Star Hub”, will eventually comprise around 1,000 satellites, according to Chi Nan, an optical communications professor at Fudan University. The network is being jointly developed by Fudan and Shanghai Xingshu Tiansuan Space Tec...
Hong Kong resident Yau Suk-ming was startled in her kitchen when her daughter turned on a countertop blender and a rat leapt out into the open. The rodent scurried away before the 74-year-old retiree could catch it, but she was not surprised as she had earlier noticed rat droppings in her flat on Kowloon City’s Bulkeley Street. “Turns out rats are afraid of ‘earthquakes’ – but I was not afraid, I ...
Canada’s decision to take a role in the next-generation Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) has eased Japan’s fears over its fighter jet future, while Germany is also reported to be exploring whether it could join the project that also involves Britain and Italy. The moves could give fresh momentum to GCAP, a programme to develop a next-generation fighter that Japan sees as critical to replacing it...
More than one-third of Americans see China, and not the United States, as the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), according to a Pew Research Centre survey released on Thursday, as US President Donald Trump confirmed the technology would be on the agenda when his Chinese counterpart visits the US later this year. The survey found that 36 per cent of Americans believe China is more advan...
Ackbar Abbas, a Hong Kong-born scholar whose influence extended beyond academia to shape artists, filmmakers, writers and many others, died on July 13 at the age of 84 after a brief battle with cancer. Over decades of teaching at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), Abbas did not simply analyse Hong Kong – he altered the way Hong Kong could be described...
Even as local retail spending remains resilient, Hong Kong consumers are shopping more across the border in mainland China, drawn by lower prices and wider adoption of digital payments, according to data from payment giant UnionPay International. Offline UnionPay card spending in mainland China by Hong Kong residents rose nearly 30 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026, while online and ...
Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk ended a 26-day hunger strike on Friday over leaked medical school entrance exam papers that protesters say enabled cheating, but demonstrations demanding the education minister’s resignation were set to continue in the biggest youth-led challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Youth protesters, led by the self-named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement...
The White House threw a US-Saudi Arabia nuclear deal into question on Thursday, a day after it was signed, emphasising that it depended on the oil-rich Gulf country recognising Israel under a 2020 diplomatic initiative. “The Civil Nuclear Deal … will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” US President Donald Trump wrote on so...
There is a change in the skies and waters around Taiwan. In the first half of this year, the number of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets detected near the island more than halved year on year to 1,334. It was a three-year low and marked the lowest operational tempo since 2023, according to a tally by the South China Morning Post based on data from Taiwan’s defence ministry. At the same t...
US senators broadly agree that Chinese connected vehicles should be kept off American roads. But a bipartisan attempt to codify and expand existing restrictions has exposed divisions over whether the proposed ban could ensnare European carmakers and increase costs for American electric-vehicle producers. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation advanced the Connected Vehicle S...
The United States imposed late on Thursday a fresh wave of tariffs against 60 economies, including China, Japan, South Korea, India and European Union member states, hours before a temporary 10 per cent blanket levy was due to expire. The tariffs, ranging from 10 to 12.5 per cent, are the outcome of a Section 301 investigation into forced labour, with Washington arguing that existing measures have...
