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Hong Kong’s new cash incentives of up to HK$45,000 (US$5,740) to encourage welfare recipients to take up jobs are expected to benefit many single-parent families, lawmakers have said, while urging more flexible eligibility rules and stronger employment support. Legislators made the remarks on Tuesday as the government unveiled a three-year pilot scheme, which is financed by the Community Care Fund...
Hong Kong’s new cash incentives of up to HK$45,000 (US$5,740) to encourage welfare recipients to take up jobs are expected to benefit many single-parent families, lawmakers have said, while urging more flexible eligibility rules and stronger employment support. Legislators made the remarks on Tuesday as the government unveiled a three-year pilot scheme, funded by the Community Care Fund, set to la...
A man suspected of repeatedly stalking a 22-year-old university student has been arrested in Malaysia after CCTV footage showing him sniffing her shoes outside her flat went viral on social media. The footage shows a man in a black T-shirt loitering in a corridor outside what is believed to be the victim’s home in Shah Alam, before reaching through a grille to grab her footwear and sniff it. The v...
We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Why South Korea is celebrating a Canada submarine deal it lost South Korea may have lost Canada’s multibillion-dollar submarine order, but analysts say its close-run conte...
Jeju’s renewed push to allow Chinese tourists to drive rental cars on the South Korean resort island is reigniting a decade-old debate over safety, insurance and legal loopholes. On July 2, the island’s Vice-Governor Park Cheon-su said allowing Chinese tourists to drive could boost visitor spending during a live-streamed meeting with senior provincial government officials. “A large portion of inde...
Mark Wahlberg shed the aura of a Hollywood star when he savoured street food and mingled with locals in Penang while filming Netflix’s The Big Fix. His trip delighted Malaysians and highlighted the country’s growing appeal to global productions. Videos of Wahlberg, who played a former Boston police detective in Spenser Confidential, filming around the Malaysian state went viral on social media ove...
Former Politburo member and Xinjiang Communist Party chief Ma Xingrui has been stripped of party membership and dismissed from public office following an anti-corruption investigation. Ma, 67, who once headed China’s new-generation carrier rocket programme, is the third member of the Politburo – the party’s elite political body – to come under investigation in the current term that began in 2022, ...
Former Politburo member and Xinjiang party chief Ma Xingrui has been removed from the party and dismissed from public office following an anti-corruption investigation, the state broadcaster said on Tuesday. Ma, 67, became the third member of the Politburo – the ruling party’s elite political body – to come under investigation in the current term that began in 2022, a situation unseen in decades. ...
Former Politburo member and Xinjiang party chief Ma Xingrui has been removed from the party and dismissed from public office following an anti-corruption investigation, the state broadcaster said on Tuesday. More to follow...
The Argentine national football team expressed solidarity with China’s flood-affected Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Tuesday, offering to donate supplies to victims of the disaster. In a statement online, the national team, beloved by Chinese fans, said it would contribute provisions such as water bottles, towels, clothing and backpacks to aid post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. The te...
The Argentine national football team has expressed solidarity with China’s flood-affected Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and announced it will donate to victims of the disaster, according to a statement posted on Tuesday. The national team, beloved by Chinese fans, declared plans to donate from its supplies – including water bottles, towels, clothing and backpacks – to aid post-disaster recovery...
Typhoon Bavi is continuing to bring torrential downpours to northeast China, forcing the transport and economic hub of Shenyang to halt non-essential travel and shut down parts of its subway network. Emergency measures remain in place on Tuesday in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, where Bavi continues to lash the city, despite weakening into a tropical storm. Across the province, more tha...
The London Clearing House (LCH) has begun accepting offshore yuan-denominated Chinese government bonds as eligible non-cash collateral, marking a structural milestone in Beijing’s decade-long push to internationalise its currency and integrate its debt into global financial pipelines. The decision by LCH – a major derivatives clearing house owned by the London Stock Exchange Group – allows investo...
India’s nuclear energy ambitions hinge not only on reactors and reforms but also on an unresolved fuel question: where the uranium will come from. A deal finalised with Australia last week could provide part of the answer, giving New Delhi access to the world’s largest known uranium reserves after years of delay linked to concerns over nuclear safeguards. Analysts said the agreement would help Ind...
Yemen’s Houthi movement fired missiles at Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport under their control on Monday, breaking a four-year truce in the conflict between the kingdom and the Iran-aligned group. Saudi Arabia intercepted missiles “launched by the terrorist Houthi militia toward the southern region,” the spokesperson for a Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said on ...
On July 6, a Chinese strategic nuclear submarine fired a missile carrying a training dummy warhead into a designated area of the Pacific. Beijing described the launch as routine, said relevant countries had been notified and insisted that it targeted no state. The regional reaction was immediate, with Australia, Japan, the United States and Pacific nations raising concerns around insufficient noti...
A woman in eastern China fractured four of her mother-in-law’s ribs after accusing the older woman of neglecting her grandchildren to pursue a romantic relationship. The family feud in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, was recently reported by Zhejiang Television and has fuelled a heated online debate over childcare and filial obligations. After Jiao and his elder brother lost their father, the two rema...
A US airbase in Jordan was targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles on Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said, while calling on Jordanians to dismantle American bases in the kingdom. “You know very well that not only do we not have any enmity with your country, but we also love you, the noble people, who understand the pain and oppression of the Palestinian people more than any othe...
The US military carried out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Monday as US President Donald Trump reinstated a blockade of Iranian shipping and proposed charging a 20 per cent fee to guard the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command said it began strikes at Trump’s direction just after the US president told the “Hugh Hewitt Show” that Iran would be hit “very hard tonight, and we’r...
The US military carried out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Monday as US President Donald Trump reinstated a blockade of Iranian shipping and proposed charging a 20 per cent fee to guard the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command said it began strikes at Trump’s direction just after the US president told the “Hugh Hewitt Show” that Iran would be hit “very hard tonight, and we’r...
One Indian crew member was killed and eight others were wounded when two Emirati oil tankers were struck by Iranian cruise missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday, in the latest escalation in the strategic waterway. The ministry said the tankers, the Mombasa and Al Bahiyah, were targeted in the southern lane of the strait while in Omani terri...
Facing anti-corruption policies and profit squeezing at home, Chinese innovative medical device companies are accelerating their push into the European market despite mounting cross-border trade protectionism. Government-backed hospital purchases of medical devices in China fell about 12 per cent year on year in the first five months of 2026, partly weighed down by “a new anti-corruption probe int...
Artificial intelligence boosts homework scores but cuts exam results by 20 per cent, and this “brain drain” effect takes two years to fully emerge, a new study has found. Generative AI is rapidly transforming classrooms as much as workplaces, with students increasingly turning to chatbots to draft essays and solve problem sets. But is the technology a personalised tutor or a slow-acting cognitive ...
Concern that foreign spies can operate with impunity in Japan has deepened following a media report that dozens of Russian agents ordered to leave Western European countries have entered Tokyo and are buying components for Moscow’s war on Ukraine. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Moscow’s agents were taking advantage of Tokyo’s failure to enact a law specifically designed to combat espio...
With central banks prioritising domestic objectives, Plaza Accord-style exchange-rate coordination is now out of reach despite growing concerns over the dollar-centred monetary system, complicating the smooth transition to a more multipolar international monetary system, according to a prominent economic historian. Barry Eichengreen, a former senior policy adviser at the International Monetary Fun...
Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with missiles early on Tuesday, triggering fires in widely separated districts of the city, senior officials said. The air alert in the city was lifted after about 50 minutes. No casualties were reported. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said two storage areas were hit and set on fire in the Holosiivskyi district...
Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with missiles early on Tuesday, triggering fires in widely separated districts of the city, senior officials said. The air alert in the city was lifted after about 50 minutes. No casualties were reported. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said two storage areas were hit and set on fire in the Holosiivskyi distri...
Britain banned support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a linked group on Monday following a series of antisemitic attacks, using new powers designed to stop the use of state-sponsored proxies. The government and intelligence agencies have become increasingly concerned about foreign powers paying organised crime groups or low-level criminals for surveillance, sabotage or ot...
