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Asia’s oil buyers are facing the risk of a second maritime chokepoint being disrupted after Iran-aligned Houthi militants threatened to impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, even as shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain severely disrupted by the US-Iran conflict. Analysts said any serious disruption in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could leave Asia with fewer alternatives for Middle Eastern ...
A man suspected of fatally shooting six child welfare workers at a shelter for mothers in Stade in northern Germany last month died by suicide in jail on Tuesday, officials said. The suspect, who has been partially identified in German media as 45-year-old Fatih Khan G., was found dead by jail staff in his single cell early Tuesday, the Lower Saxony state justice ministry said in a statement. The ...
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Tuesday he would cut taxes on electricity bills, the first of several early moves to signal his intent to ease a cost-of-living crisis and quell anger over successive governments’ failure to bring change. On his second day in his new job, Burnham said his government would remove the value-added tax from domestic electricity bills from October 1, cutting...
Taiwan has cleared the way for overseas satellite internet providers such as Starlink to operate on the island – a move analysts said could strengthen military and civilian communications if conventional networks were disrupted in a conflict with mainland China. On Tuesday, the island’s legislature approved an amendment to the Telecommunications Management Act that would exempt satellite communica...
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has appointed army chief Lieutenant General Antonio G. Nafarrete as the next head of the armed forces, placing a veteran of the country’s internal conflicts in charge before a sensitive election in the Muslim south and amid continued maritime tensions with China. The choice points to continuity in security policy and puts the Armed Forces of the Philippine...
Shares of Chinese AI giant Z.ai soared 37 per cent in Hong Kong on Tuesday to close at HK$1,219 (US$155), after the company recently completed a giant data centre powered entirely by Chinese chips. Also known as Zhipu, the firm’s share prices rebounded after a week-long drop of more than 40 per cent. According to people familiar with the matter, it had built a giant 1-gigawatt (GW) AI computing ce...
Shares of Chinese AI giant Z.ai soared 37 per cent in Hong Kong on Tuesday to close at HK$1,219 (US$155), after the company recently completed a giant data centre powered entirely by Chinese chips. Also known as Zhipu, the firm’s share prices rebounded after a week-long drop of more than 40 per cent. According to people familiar with the matter, it had built a giant 1-gigawatt AI computing centre ...
The China threat has landed in Brussels. A new European Union position paper accuses Beijing of amplifying security threats, posing “a critical long-term strategic challenge” and reviving “sphere-of-influence logic” to reshape the global order. Beijing is cast as an enabler of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while its “assertive behaviour” in the South China Sea threatens European and Indo-Pacific s...
A Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) system has topped an international ranking for autonomous scientific research, pulling ahead of Anthropic’s Claude Code and other top agents. As of Tuesday, the Zhejiang University-led Qiushi Engine held the top overall spot on the ResearchClawBench leaderboard, with Open Science Desktop in second and Claude Code in third. ResearchClawBench tests the ability ...
A Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) system has topped an international ranking for autonomous scientific research, pulling ahead of Anthropic’s Claude Code and other top agents. As of Tuesday, the Zhejiang University-led Qiushi Engine held the top overall spot on the ResearchClawBench leaderboard, with Open Science Desktop in second and Claude Code in third. ResearchClawBench tests the ability ...
An elderly Hong Kong man known on the internet as “Mr Ho” has been jailed for two months for stabbing his much younger wife upon learning she was returning to mainland China after their relationship turned sour. The District Court sentenced 79-year-old Ho Huen in his absence on Tuesday after learning the defendant, who missed an earlier hearing due to an undisclosed medical condition, was still in...
Indonesia has further reduced its budget for President Prabowo Subianto’s signature free school meals programme to 229 trillion rupiah (US$12.81 billion) from 268 trillion rupiah and more cuts are possible, senior officials running the project said on Tuesday. The programme is Prabowo’s most important and expensive election campaign pledge and has been central to wider concerns about Indonesia...
A Hong Kong High Court judge previously reprimanded for plagiarism has been found to have done so again, after an appeal court determined that almost 95 per cent of a previous judgment was lifted from the defendant’s counsel. In a ruling dated July 15, which came to light on Tuesday, a panel of three Court of Appeal judges found that Mr Justice Wilson Chan Ka-shun had engaged in “impermissible jud...
Chinese military analysts are urging the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to rapidly strengthen harbour defences after the United States carried out its first combat strike using unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to destroy an Iranian submarine. US Central Command released footage on July 13 of what it said was the first combat use of American sea drones. Three vessels were shown striking an Iranian b...
A former Hong Kong fencer has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison for laundering more than HK$10 million (US$1.27 million), saying in mitigation that he opened the mule bank accounts to “make a quick buck”. The District Court handed down the sentence on Tuesday after Chiu Man-to, 26, admitted to laundering HK$10.6 million through five bank accounts under his name between August...
A former Hong Kong fencer has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison for laundering more than HK$10 million (US$1.27 million), saying in mitigation that he opened the mule accounts to “make a quick buck”. The District Court on Tuesday heard the guilty pleas from Chiu Man-to, 26, who admitted to laundering a total of HK$10.6 million through five bank accounts under his name between...
A US-headquartered biotech firm plans to seek a primary listing in Hong Kong, joining a swelling pipeline of artificial intelligence-powered medical players raising capital in the city. Axiom Biosciences, which develops experimental therapies for newborns with severe brain injuries by using AI, is targeting at least US$200 million through an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong in 2027, foll...
A European Parliament delegation has begun a three-day visit to China to meet senior officials in Beijing and Shanghai to manage strained ties amid escalating trade friction, geopolitical uncertainty and expanding EU import curbs. The eight-member delegation from the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, led by committee chairman David McAllister, arrived on Tuesday and is set to mee...
Indonesia’s decision to join a new China-led artificial intelligence body has raised questions about how far Jakarta can push its digital ambitions without complicating its ties with Washington. For Indonesia, membership in the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico) offers a route to training, infrastructure and a bigger role in global AI governance as it seeks to boost tec...
A 53-year-old Hong Kong woman died and five others were injured in a head-on car crash in Japan on Monday, becoming the second such accident in Hokkaido prefecture to involve city residents in less than a week. Japanese news outlets reported that the incident took place at around 3.30pm (Japan Standard Time) on National Route 38 in Furano. A rental car carrying a family of four from Hong Kong cros...
Hong Kong has retained its 17th place among the world’s top destinations for students, but British rankings firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has said that high living costs along with the steepest tuition fees in East Asia continue to deter international applicants. QS also identified limited international diversity and a persistent shortage of accommodation for students as key challenges for the ci...
Li Chengru is a nationally famous Chinese actor, but before he gained fame as an entertainer, he was a self-made businessman who lost his entire US$13 million in foreign currency trading. Beijing-born Li, 71, is famous for many classic roles, such as police officer Da Zeng in one of China’s first crime dramas, The VI Group of Fatal Case, and a psychopath who delivers a sharp monologue about the re...
Hong Kong police have arrested 78 people, including a 16-year-old, in a crackdown on illegal gambling that uncovered a syndicate operating at the Happy Valley Racecourse. Lo Kin-pong, a chief inspector from the Hong Kong Island regional anti-triad unit, said on Tuesday that police targeted illicit drugs, gambling, prostitution and triad activities in a campaign that ran from July 7 to Monday. Offi...
Hong Kong police have arrested 78 people, with the youngest aged 16, in a crackdown on illegal gambling activities, including a syndicate operating at the Happy Valley racecourse. Lo Kin-pong, chief inspector from the regional anti-triad unit on Hong Kong Island, said on Tuesday that the force conducted enforcement efforts between July 7 and Monday against illicit drug, gambling, prostitution and ...
Hong Kong police have arrested 78 people, with the youngest aged 16, in a crackdown on illegal gambling activities, including a syndicate operating at the Happy Valley racecourse. Lo Kin-pong, chief inspector from the regional anti-triad unit on Hong Kong Island, said on Tuesday that the force conducted enforcement efforts between July 7 and Monday against illicit drug, gambling, prostitution and ...
A groundbreaking cross-border insurance policy covering a piloted aircraft has cleared a key regulatory obstacle, allowing the Shenzhen vehicle to take to the sky in Hong Kong. Shenzhen-based aircraft developer Yivtol recently obtained a policy for an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, underwritten in its home city but issued in neighbouring Hong Kong. With a total liability ...
A suspected gas explosion on Monday triggered a collapse inside a tunnel that was under construction at a hydropower project in India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, leaving at least 11 people dead and 14 missing, officials said on Tuesday. State Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, who visited the disaster site near the Chinese border, said the explosion was triggered by a build-up of meth...
At least 10 people were killed and 17 others remain missing after a suspected gas explosion triggered a collapse inside an under-construction tunnel at a hydropower project in India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, near the Chinese border, officials said on Tuesday. The blast ripped through the tunnel on Monday at Samardung village, about 40km (25 miles) from the state capital, Gangtok, w...
Fifteen Indian workers were feared trapped on Tuesday after a blast caused by a suspected gas leak in a tunnel at a hydroelectric project in the rugged state of Sikkim killed 10, authorities said. Monday’s incident took place at state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corp’s (NHPC) project on the Teesta river in the northeastern state’s village of Samardung, district official Subash Ghimirey sa...
Malaysia is close to overhauling its nearly 30-year-old cybercrime law and giving authorities long-sought tools to pursue online fraud, digital impersonation and AI-generated abuse, but experts say the bill’s impact will depend on whether investigators can enforce it effectively and prevent misuse of its powers. The Cybercrimes Bill 2026 was first tabled in parliament on June 22 and passed by the ...
