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China’s durian imports rose 47 per cent, year on year, in the first half of 2026, with Thailand and Malaysia posting particularly strong gains, according to customs data, as Southeast Asian exporters offloaded a glut of the fruit that had sparked a price drop. Thailand exported nearly US$3.79 billion worth of the pungent spiky fruit shipped to China in the first half of 2026, the Chinese customs d...
Four disgraced Hong Kong police officers have lost their appeal against convictions and jail terms for framing a homeless man for drug possession and destroying evidence of the cover-up six years ago. In a written judgment on Thursday, the Court of Appeal said the officers must have intended to pervert the course of justice when they tried to obstruct surveillance cameras while colleagues fabricat...
Four disgraced Hong Kong police officers have lost their appeal against convictions and jail terms for framing a homeless man for drug possession and destroying evidence of the cover-up six years ago. In a written judgment on Thursday, the Court of Appeal said the officers must have intended to pervert the course of justice when they tried to obstruct surveillance cameras while colleagues fabricat...
Hong Kong has approved its first trial scheme for fully driverless autonomous vehicles, with the technology to be tested on Airport Island without a person at the wheel as a backup for the first time. The Transport Department announced on Thursday that it had expanded the scope of a pilot licence for autonomous vehicle trial schemes in North Lantau, after concluding that earlier remote-operation t...
Thai authorities said on Thursday they are searching for the people responsible for an attack in the country’s troubled deep south region that killed five soldiers and injured several civilians. About 10 attackers opened fire and threw pipe bombs at soldiers at a security checkpoint near a residential area in Narathiwat province on Wednesday evening before fleeing, according to the regional Intern...
In China, many heartbroken women are spending thousands of yuan on services that claim they can help win back former lovers, with the first rule being “no contact with your ex”. A 28-year-old woman, using the pseudonym Wan, said she had paid a “relationship coach” 3,500 yuan (US$500) for a month of 24/7 coaching to win back her ex-boyfriend who recently broke up with her. The coach used an initial...
Japan’s largest convenience store operator has issued a warning to its 7-Eleven franchisees nationwide that unauthorised resale of merchandise featuring popular anime and game characters may be rampant, multiple sources close to the matter said on Thursday. Some owners and employees have been caught setting aside merchandise before its release or buying up large quantities to sell on resale sites....
Beijing launched a two-day live-fire drill in the Taiwan Strait on Thursday, coinciding with the end of a fisheries resources survey east of Taiwan and soon after Beijing labelled a recent speech by Taiwan’s leader as reckless and provocative. The drill will run from 6am to 6pm on Thursday and Friday, according to a navigation warning issued by Beijing’s maritime safety administration on Wednesday...
Mainland China is conducting two-day live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait off coastal waters of the southeastern province of Fujian, its maritime authority said. The drill will run from 6am to 6pm on both Thursday and Friday, according to a navigation warning issued by the China Maritime Safety Administration on Wednesday. People’s Liberation Army drills usually peak in mid and late July as th...
The Philippines’ push to establish a cross-border grid with Indonesia marks an increasing urgency to secure energy security amid soaring electricity costs and another step towards a long-delayed regional power network. While analysts hail the move as a crucial step to address domestic energy woes and unlock potential interests between neighbours, they also point to geographical and supply-chain ch...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing mounting domestic backlash over a potential trade deal with the United States that would place India at the centre of US President Donald Trump’s efforts to redirect agricultural exports displaced by the US-China trade conflict, raising fresh questions about New Delhi’s broader strategic alignment with Washington against Beijing. Thousands of farmers f...
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has rebuffed a threat by eight US lawmakers to suspend military training funds unless Kuala Lumpur reverses its long-standing restrictions on Israeli nationals. Muslim-majority Malaysia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long been one of Southeast Asia’s most vocal supporters of Palestinian statehood. Anwar said Malaysia was exercising its sovere...
A Hong Kong mechanic died earlier this week after being crushed by a 28-seater bus while he was inspecting its undercarriage, police revealed on Thursday. The force said a colleague of the victim had contacted police at 3.45pm on Tuesday about the incident, which took place in a garage on Tin Ha Road in Tin Shui Wai. Police said the deceased, a 52-year-old man surnamed Leung, managed to climb out ...
Wildfires raged on Wednesday in Sicily, southwestern France and central Spain, having claimed the lives of three firefighters and sparked thousands of evacuations. Temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius and gusts of hot wind fanned the flames in the southern Italian island, where wildfires have been raging for several days. Around 6,000 firefighters, forest guards and civil protection officials we...
A former Hong Kong opposition leader has entered the United Kingdom after reportedly being denied entry while seeking residency using his British National (Overseas) passport, according to local media. A source said on Thursday that Wu Chi-wai, former chairman of the Democratic Party and a former lawmaker, had since been allowed into the UK. The Times earlier reported, citing his friends, that he ...
A former Hong Kong opposition leader has reportedly been denied entry to the United Kingdom and faces deportation back to the city after seeking residence using his British National (Overseas) passport, according to local media. The Times reported on Thursday that Wu Chi-wai, who was released from a Hong Kong prison in late June after serving a sentence in a landmark subversion case, had been refu...
Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Austria was officially inaugurated as a police station on Wednesday in an effort to destroy the building’s appeal as a site of pilgrimage for people who glorify the Nazi dictator. A memorial stone is to remain in place outside the house in Braunau am Inn near the German border with the inscription: “For freedom, democracy and liberty. Never again fascism. Millions of d...
Labour unions are rallying across South Korea after Samsung Electronics caved in to protests and agreed to hand out bonuses of more than US$400,000 to some of its employees. Just this week, assembly-line workers at Hyundai Motor staged a three-day partial strike as they seek up to 30 per cent of consolidated profit to be set aside for bonuses. Meanwhile, unions at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and t...
One of the main features of the “one country, two systems” principle is that, despite our physical proximity, Hong Kong has a very different set of laws from those of mainland China. Very often, we talk about our differences when explaining the system to one another. But at heart, both legal systems seek to deliver justice in real-life situations. Indeed, our connections with the Chinese mainland,...
A man in northeastern China who was filmed pushing his bicycle through deep water on his way to work amid torrential rain has trended on social media. The video triggered an outpouring of emotion after internet users learned that the man was a doctor who had appointments to perform surgery on two patients that day, state news agency Xinhua reported. It was on July 13 when Shenyang, in Liaoning pro...
Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi appears to be fraying, with two new opinion polls suggesting voters are losing patience with a leader who won a sweeping mandate in February but has since spent political capital on conservative causes instead of tackling cost-of-living pressures. Analysts said the problem was not simply that Takaichi’s honeymoon period was ending, but that...
Hong Kong Observatory has said it will consider issuing the No 1 standby typhoon signal on Friday as a tropical cyclone currently near the Philippines is later expected to move closer to the city. The local forecaster said on Thursday that the cyclone, formed over waters east of the Philippines, was expected to edge closer to the coast of eastern Guangdong during the weekend and “intensify progres...
Hong Kong’s weather forecaster has said it will consider issuing the No 1 standby typhoon signal on Friday as a tropical cyclone near the Philippines is expected to move closer to the city. The Hong Kong Observatory said on Thursday that the cyclone, formed over waters east of the Philippines, was expected to edge closer to the coast of eastern Guangdong during the weekend and “intensify progressi...
A tropical depression near the Philippines could intensify into a typhoon and move closer to Hong Kong over the weekend, with a possible landfall less than 400km (249 miles) east of the city, the forecaster has said. The Hong Kong Observatory said on Thursday that the tropical depression had formed over waters east of the Philippines and was expected to move west-northwest at about 25 km/h (15.5mp...
In the past week, one regulation has forced many people in China to say goodbye to long-standing “relationships”. As of July 15, the government placed artificial intelligence (AI) companions under tight supervision. It comes as automated companions have experienced something of a boom over the past few years. According to the rules, AI-human interactions should not encourage violence or harm users...
Fresh tensions flared near a disputed South China Sea shoal on Thursday, after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his Philippine counterpart of “bitter consequences” if Manila provoked Beijing with outside backing. China’s coastguard said it drove away two Philippine government vessels near Scarborough Shoal. In a statement released on Thursday, coastguard spokesman Jiang Lue said the ships “...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday warned his Philippine counterpart that Manila would “bear the bitter consequences” if it tried to provoke Beijing with the help of other countries. Wang made the remark as he lodged a “strong protest” during talks with Theresa Lazaro, the Philippines’ top diplomat, in Manila over what he called an “aggressive act of ramming a Chinese law enforcement ve...
South Korean prosecutors have charged Korean-American professor Morse Tan for criminal defamation over false claims targeting President Lee Jae Myung. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office reportedly indicted Tan without detention on Thursday on multiple defamation charges. Tan, who served as the US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice under the first Donald Trump administratio...
China has brought online a record-breaking particle accelerator that can produce the world’s most intense beams of charged atoms. It gives scientists a new tool to create previously unknown atomic nuclei and advance research on cancer treatment and spacecraft materials. Scientific operations have now begun at the 2.6 billion yuan (US$384.1 million) facility in Huizhou, Guangdong province after con...
A monkey disrupted peak-hour train services in Hong Kong for nearly an hour on Thursday morning after straying onto the tracks near a busy MTR station. Rail operator MTR Corporation said an animal had made its way onto the tracks near Kowloon Bay station, prompting Kwun Tong line trains to run at reduced speeds. While train frequency was unaffected, overall journey times increased by five to eight...
