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New home prices in four Chinese first-tier cities rose by an average of 0.1 per cent last month, extending a four-month rebound and signalling a gradual recovery in market sentiment as housing stabilisation measures gain traction. Compared with May, home prices edged up 0.3 per cent in Shanghai and Shenzhen and by 0.2 per cent in Guangzhou, according to data released by the National Bureau of Stat...
A plan to make Nepal’s domestic flights cheaper for foreign visitors could end up making them more expensive for citizens, according to airline operators who warn against scrapping one of the country’s most contentious tourism pricing policies. Under Nepal’s two-tier airfare system, foreign passengers must pay in US dollars for domestic flights, with prices usually two to three times higher than f...
Phu Nhuan Jewellery, Vietnam’s largest listed jeweller, is facing a crisis of confidence after police detained the former head of its gem certification subsidiary over his alleged links to a transnational diamond-smuggling ring. Shares in PNJ, as the company is known, have plummeted more than 25 per cent since news of the investigation broke in early July. Police accuse Dang Ngoc Thao, the former ...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades heard the first round of closing submissions from legal representatives on Wednesday, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are also expected to deliver their final submissions in the coming days, after which the inquiry will proceed t...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear closing submissions from legal representatives, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are expected to deliver their final submissions before the panel from Wednesday to Friday, after which it will proceed to finalise a report...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear closing submissions from legal representatives, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are expected to deliver their final submissions before the panel from Wednesday to Friday, after which it will proceed to finalise a report...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear closing submissions from legal representatives, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are expected to deliver their final submissions before the panel from Wednesday to Friday, after which it will proceed to finalise a report...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear closing submissions from legal representatives, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are expected to deliver their final submissions before the panel from Wednesday to Friday, after which it will proceed to finalise a report...
An independent, judge-led committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear closing submissions from legal representatives, following 27 sessions of evidential hearings. Counsel representing the committee, the government and other parties are expected to deliver their final submissions before the panel from Wednesday to Friday, after which it will proceed to finalise a report...
The Hong Kong Observatory issued an amber rainstorm warning at 10.05am on Wednesday and urged residents to take precautions such as staying away from watercourses. The forecaster warned that widespread heavy rain could affect Hong Kong in a couple of hours and that intense gusts could continue to affect the city. It told residents to stay vigilant during the adverse weather. “This means that heavy...
Imagine, for a moment, that you lived in ancient China, with a rival state threatening your people’s very existence. In the quest for any advantage, one strategy might involve performing a ceremony to invoke assistance from the ancestors. However, life and politics are not static; old rivals can transform into close allies. This transformation raises an intriguing question: do ancient war ceremoni...
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has sent its first formal delegation to mainland China since the party’s founding, seeking to maintain cross-strait peace through dialogue amid heightened tensions with Beijing. The nine-member delegation from the island’s smaller opposition party left for Shanghai on Tuesday for a four-day visit focused on youth exchanges, urban governance, artificial intelligence ...
Mainstream media, particularly in Hong Kong, have historically been conservative in their research and development spending. Media executives prefer to shop for off-the-shelf solutions, treating technology as back-office support rather than a core growth engine. This mode of operation now faces an existential challenge amid the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI), large language model...
A pilot of the major Japanese airline All Nippon Airways was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Tuesday for abusing his power to grope a female flight attendant after work. The Tokyo District Court ruled that Ryota Mise, 44, acted in a “mean and persistent manner” towards the victim when he took advantage of his position as a captain and touched her genitals at various locations in Takamatsu, Kag...
Secondary Six students across Hong Kong have received their results for the city’s university entrance examinations. They returned to their schools on Wednesday to collect result slips for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE), which grades most subjects on a seven-level scale from 1 to 5**. A total of 24 top scorers from 15 schools were recorded this year. Fourteen male and 10 female students ...
Secondary Six students across Hong Kong are getting their results on Wednesday for the city’s university entrance examinations. They are returning to their schools to collect result slips for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE), which grades most subjects on a seven-level scale from 1 to 5**. A total of 24 top scorers from 15 schools were recorded this year. Fourteen male and 10 female studen...
Secondary Six students across Hong Kong are getting their results on Wednesday for the city’s university entrance examinations. They are returning to their schools to collect result slips for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE), which grades most subjects on a seven-level scale from 1 to 5**. A total of 24 top scorers from 15 schools were recorded this year. Fourteen male and 10 female studen...
Secondary Six students across Hong Kong are getting their results on Wednesday for the city’s university entrance examinations. They are returning to their schools to collect result slips for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE), which grades most subjects on a seven-level scale from 1 to 5**. A total of 24 top scorers from 15 schools were recorded this year. Fourteen male and 10 female studen...
Secondary Six students across Hong Kong are getting their results on Wednesday for the city’s university entrance examinations. They are returning to their schools to collect result slips for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE), which grades most subjects on a seven-level scale from 1 to 5**. A total of 24 top scorers from 15 schools were recorded this year. Fourteen male and 10 female studen...
Malaysia’s navy is preparing to take delivery of a warship fully equipped for anti-submarine, anti-air and electronic warfare – everything, that is, except a way to sink an enemy ship. After nearly a decade of delays, financial scandal and shipyard mismanagement the Royal Malaysian Navy’s first littoral combat ship is finally due in December. But it will arrive missing any anti-ship missiles. Norw...
Malaysia’s navy is preparing to take delivery of a warship fully equipped for anti-submarine, anti-air and electronic warfare – everything, that is, except a way to sink an enemy ship. After nearly a decade of delays, financial scandal and shipyard mismanagement the Royal Malaysian Navy’s first littoral combat ship is finally due in December. But it will arrive missing any anti-ship missiles. Norw...
China is an existential threat to the United States, and Washington needs to slow Chinese momentum and accelerate US technological advances, or fall well behind the Asian giant, witnesses told lawmakers at a Congressional round table on Tuesday. Among the possible strategies needed to counter Beijing’s growing prowess, analysts said, included expanding the Silicon Shield – an attempt to remove Chi...
Hong Kong health authorities have made an urgent appeal for a heart transplant for a six-month-old boy in a critical condition, saying the Hospital Authority will also seek assistance from mainland China soon. An authority spokesman said on Tuesday evening that six-month-old Rufus, who suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy and is in the paediatric intensive care unit at Hong Kong Children’s Hospital...
There will be no turning back the clock if the US House has its way. The House passed a bill on Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent. Proponents, including the White House, argued the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active. The vote was 308-117. Daylight saving time is that period between spring and fall when clocks in most parts of the...
A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the third of our series on the anniversary, Laura Zhou looks at why the gap between international law and geopolitical reality on the water has never been wider. On a scorching morning this summer, more than a hundred Chinese to...
Huddled in a room around a big screen, dozens of Boko Haram members listened intently as external consultants, whom they called “the white guys”, coached them on how to use leading artificial intelligence chatbots with laptops pre-installed with VPNs and encryption software. The workshop was one of several training sessions delivered by specialised AI “trainers”, likely members of the vast Islamic...
Connectivity can be an ambiguous term. Different states use it in different ways at different times. In Southeast Asia, as in other regions where regional diplomacy exists in the backdrop of ever-stronger great power disputes, connectivity lies in the conflux of economics, trade necessities and the unyielding pressure of geopolitics. In few countries is this more evident than in Cambodia, where in...
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold on Tuesday for US$50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil bought at auction, after a 10-minute battle between seven bidders. “Gus” is one of the world’s most complete T. rex skeletons – with 183 fossilised bones – and was discovered on a cattle ranch in South Dakota in 2021. The giant beast lived some 72 t...
American chipmaker Nvidia has shipped “very few” H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to mainland China and Hong Kong, a top Trump administration official told lawmakers on Tuesday, marking the first deliveries since the United States approved such sales. US President Donald Trump cleared the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China in December, with the Commerce Department approving around 10 Chin...
US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told lawmakers Tuesday that a sharp increase in threats targeting her and other justices is increasingly encroaching on their personal and family lives. During a rare appearance by justices before Congress, Barrett said she had to take a bulletproof vest home a few years ago, something she struggled to explain to her 12-year-old son. “I didn’t expect that...
