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Authorities in India’s capital Delhi moved social activist Sonam Wangchuk to hospital against his will on Saturday, after his condition worsened on the 21st day of a hunger strike launched to demand the resignation of the federal education minister. Wangchuk, 59, had been fasting since June 28 in solidarity with India’s youth Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which is demanding Education Minister Dharm...
When devastating floods swept through Assam in northeastern India in 2018, the disaster quickly triggered a troubling question within New Delhi’s security corridors. As technology advances, could control over the weather become a tool of geopolitical pressure, or even a weapon? Much of the concern centred on neighbouring China. Assam’s then finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, publicly warned ab...
Hong Kong customs officers have arrested three men in connection with the seizure of 131kg (289lbs) of suspected ketamine worth about HK$51 million (US$6.5 million), disguised as sugar cubes and found in air cargo transported to the city. Chiu Kai-wing, a senior investigator with the Customs and Excise Department’s drug investigation bureau, said on Saturday that officers had intercepted the air c...
Some residents left homeless by Hong Kong’s deadliest inferno in decades have called for merging the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit (ICU) with the Buildings Department after a public inquiry revealed communication failures between them. In recommendations submitted to the independent committee investigating the Wang Fuk Court fire, which were released on Saturday, legal representatives...
Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), Hong Kong’s largest developer by market capitalisation, has sold out the first batch of units at its Garden Regency project in the New Territories on Saturday, according to agents. By 3.30pm, all 138 flats the developer had launched in the Kam Tin North project in Yuen Long had found buyers, the agents said. The launch of the three-tower development of 566 units mar...
Alibaba Group Holding’s chip design unit, T-Head, has announced that it will open-source its proprietary software stack, marking its latest effort to streamline developer operations and challenge the dominance of American chip giant Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem. At the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Saturday, T-Head announced that it was making the full technical stack of SAIL – the foundati...
An independent inquiry into Hong Kong’s deadly Tai Po fire has concluded after examining more than 1 million files and hearing from 80 witnesses across 30 public sessions, uncovering the causes of the blaze that killed 168 people. The panel, chaired by Justice David Lok Kai-hong, wrapped up its hearings on Friday after proceedings that began on March 19. The inquiry examined evidence and testimony...
India’s first privately built orbital rocket took its maiden flight on Saturday, its company said, marking a significant step for the South Asian giant as it eyes a bigger slice of the global space economy. The Vikram-1 rocket, built by Skyroot Aerospace and designed to carry small satellites into low-Earth orbit, took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota amid loud cheers. “Hello...
Indonesia is pushing ahead to transform the holiday island of Bali into an international financial centre, with its parliament set to debate new laws this week while a key conference set out targets and cited models such as Hong Kong as an example. Minister of Investment and Downstream Industry Rosan Roeslani, who heads state-owned sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia, said the financial cent...
In Abidjan, the commercial capital and economic engine of Ivory Coast, the extent of Chinese infrastructure development is a permanent feature of the transport and trade networks. This includes the Alassane Ouattara Bridge, commonly known as the Cocody Bridge, which links the affluent eastern district of Cocody to the business centre of Plateau. The expansion of the Port of Abidjan’s second contai...
The Hong Kong government has indicated that it is unlikely to hold a by-election to fill the vacancy left by former lawmaker William Wong Kam-fai’s resignation over his drink-driving and hit-and-run case, citing time constraints and concerns about cost-effectiveness. Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Janice Tse Siu-wa also said on Saturday that the government had received 2,500 sub...
It turns out it isn’t just office jobs people should be worried about AI taking, some athletes might want to watch their backs too. In a scene that could have come from the Terminator film franchise, two robots battled it out in an MMA fight in Shenzhen this week, leaving social media users stunned and one of the two combatants without a head. Dubbed the robot version of the UFC, the Ultimate Robo...
A Hongkonger has died in a traffic accident in New Zealand, marking at least the second fatal crash involving city residents in the country this year. The Chinese consulate in Queenstown on Thursday said that a “serious traffic accident” had occurred a day earlier along Crown Range Road near the South Island city in which a Hongkonger died. “Our consulate is deeply saddened by the loss and has act...
Hong Kong authorities plan to invite ride-hailing platforms to apply for operator licences as early as next month and will begin approving them in batches from the end of November, the city’s transport minister has said. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan laid down the timeline on Thursday as lawmakers completed the negative vetting process to approve the subsidiary legislation for t...
Hong Kong authorities plan to invite ride-hailing platforms to apply for operator licences as early as next month and will begin approving them in batches from the end of November, the city’s transport minister has said. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan laid down the timeline on Thursday as lawmakers completed the negative vetting process to approve the subsidiary legislation for t...
This article was first published on July 17, 1986. Cafe de Coral the live wire in quiet market by John Mulcahy Fast-food counter Cafe de Coral hit the boards yesterday (July 16, 1986), trading up to $1.35 and recording the biggest volume of the day. Although 16.6 million Cafe de Coral shares traded, at a total value of $22.08 million, this was about all the excitement the market could muster, as i...
A boom in China’s new drug research and development is driving laboratory monkey prices back to coronavirus pandemic-era highs, forcing some researchers to halt their studies. According to Guo Xiangyu, a scientist at Jinan University in Guangzhou whose research focuses on developing non-human primate models for major brain diseases, laboratory monkey prices have risen steadily since Chinese New Ye...
A group of Chinese travellers in South Korea successfully brought a runaway coach under control after the driver lost consciousness while driving, triggering heated discussions online. On Chinese social media, several passengers shared what they experienced on the limousine to Incheon International Airport in the afternoon of July 11. As the coach with 10 to 20 passengers headed towards the expres...
The US will begin charging 25 per cent tariff on imports of certain goods from Brazil following an investigation alleging that the country engaged in unfair trade practices. The year-long inquiry “found a number of Brazil’s practices to be unreasonable and discriminatory, restricting the competitive position of American farmers, workers, innovators, and exporters,” the Office of the US Trade Repre...
The UN warned on Thursday that more than 500 people were feared dead following reports of two large shipwrecks off Myanmar since late June. The UN’s International Organization for Migration and its refugee agency UNHCR voiced alarm in a joint statement at reports “that two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days”. Preliminary information indica...
Africa’s exports to China have surged since Beijing expanded its zero-tariff policy across the continent in May, as customs data showed signs of emerging trade links in a range of new sectors alongside traditional categories such as critical minerals. China’s imports from Africa soared by 21.1 per cent and 40.2 per cent year on year in May and June, respectively – outpacing the overall growth in C...
Authorities should step up promotion of the new crossing arrangements at the upgraded Huanggang Port checkpoint between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, while ensuring the site has sufficient parking for buses, a lawmaker and a transport sector veteran have said. They issued the call a day after the government tabled the Huanggang Port Hong Kong Port Area Bill to the Legislative Council to provide the lega...
Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs has cast a vote of confidence in Hong Kong’s financial future by reaffirming its “buy rating” on Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), as Beijing ramps up policy support to cement the city’s status as an international financial centre. “We see multiple tailwinds to ADT [average daily turnover] and revenue growth” in the second half of this year, analyst...
Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs has cast a vote of confidence in Hong Kong’s financial future by reaffirming its buy rating on Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), as Beijing ramps up policy support to cement the city’s status as an international financial centre. “We see multiple tailwinds to ADT [average daily turnover] and revenue growth” in the second half of this year, analysts ...
Jia Qianqian, daughter of internationally acclaimed writer Jia Pingwa, has become the latest high-profile figure in Chinese academia to fall from grace after a university investigation confirmed allegations of plagiarism. In a statement on Wednesday, Northwest University said its months-long investigation found that nine of Jia’s published papers contained plagiarised material. The university had ...
Detainees at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas told two rights groups they were beaten by guards, denied medical care and prevented from contacting family and lawyers, according to a report issued on Wednesday. The report, issued by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, spans dozens of pages and is based on 80 interviews HRW conducted with d...
A growing number of mainland Chinese institutional fund managers have built up stakes in Hong Kong-listed biotechnology stocks over the past month, drawn by attractive valuations amid a surge in cross-border licensing deals in the sector. China’s largest mutual fund manager, E Fund Management, has taken a 7 per cent stake in gene-editing biotechnology firm Biocytogen Pharmaceuticals, buying additi...
An independent committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear concluding remarks from the government on Thursday as the final round of hearings on the tragedy continues. The legal representative for nine residents of the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court housing estate in Tai Po will also deliver a concluding statement before the judge-led panel on the second last session of the...
An independent committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear concluding remarks from the government on Thursday as the final round of hearings on the tragedy continues. The legal representative for nine residents of the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court housing estate in Tai Po will also deliver a concluding statement before the judge-led panel on the second last session of the...
