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After China’s cross-border deals for innovative drugs hit a record US$110 billion in the first half of 2026, the sector is now pivoting towards artificial intelligence-powered candidates to drive the next wave of transactions. China accounted for about 30 per cent of all new drugs currently under development worldwide, ranking second globally, according to Lan Gongtao, deputy director general of t...
Hong Kong residents on government welfare can receive cash incentives of up to HK$45,000 (US$5,740) over three years if they secure stable employment and transition to a scheme that promotes self-reliance, authorities announced on Monday. The cash incentive scheme, funded by the Community Care Fund, will launch on October 1. It targets families moving from the Comprehensive Social Security Assista...
A Shenzhen-based investment veteran has revealed on social media that he spent 13 million yuan (US$1.9 million) over nine years to send the woman who deceived him to prison. The story of Li Ping has drawn significant attention online. His 15-minute video, released on June 30, has garnered 69,000 likes and 9,000 comments, news portal guancha.cn reported. Li, 52, said in his clip that during the per...
China will make vehicle connectivity a mandatory part of its automotive safety framework, as Washington seeks to block Chinese cars using the technology over national security concerns. A national standard released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on July 2 requires all new vehicles equipped with intelligent driver assistance systems to support continuous safety monitoring, d...
A United States citizen infected with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was admitted to Frankfurt University Hospital early on Monday, officials said. The patient arrived at the hospital’s special isolation unit at around 3am local time after contracting the Bundibugyo variant of the Ebola virus in Congo, the hospital said. The US CDC said on Friday that a US citizen worki...
China has become just the second country after the United States to achieve the controlled recovery of a reusable orbital space rocket. Friday’s successful capture at sea of the booster stage of a Long March-10B rocket after its maiden launch used a novel technique different from that of Elon Musk’s recently listed SpaceX and previous Chinese attempts. Instead of landing using extendable hydraulic...
New satellite images suggest China’s land reclamation at Antelope Reef in the South China Sea is nearly finished, according to researchers. One image taken on June 22 showed that dredgers within the lagoon of the teardrop-shaped coral atoll in the Paracel Islands had been replaced by cargo barges, an indication that land reclamation was near completion, London-based research group the Open Source ...
Filipino domestic workers continue to endure widespread labour exploitation and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia, according to a new Amnesty International report. The rights watchdog found conditions had barely improved despite years of promised reforms, including last year’s abolition of the kingdom’s notorious “kafala” sponsorship system. The report, based on interviews conducted in March with 19 Fi...
To challenge the global launch market dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Beijing is adopting a coordinated, multi-company “wolf-pack” strategy fuelled by recent engineering breakthroughs in reusable rocketry. The milestones come as a wave of aerospace firms push to secure the capital needed to scale operations and capture global market share. According to exchange filings in Shanghai and Hong Kong, ...
To challenge the global launch market dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Beijing is adopting a coordinated, multi-company “wolf-pack” strategy fuelled by recent engineering breakthroughs in reusable rocketry. The milestones come as a wave of aerospace firms push to secure the capital needed to scale operations and capture global market share. According to exchange filings in Shanghai and Hong Kong, ...
A South Korean court sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday to two years in prison for illegally receiving free opinion polls in exchange for political support, adding to his growing legal woes. Yoon, 65, is already in detention while appealing against a separate life sentence for leading an insurrection through his declaration of martial law in 2024. In a separate case, a court handed...
A South Korean court sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol to two years in prison on Monday after finding him guilty of illegally receiving opinion polling services worth 270 million won (US$179,800) for free from a political broker, local media said. The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon violated political funding laws by receiving 14 rounds of polling from the political broker at no ...
A South Korean court sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol to two years in prison on Monday after finding him guilty of illegally receiving opinion polling services worth 270 million won (US$179,800) for free from a political broker, local media said. The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon violated political funding laws by receiving 14 rounds of polling from the political broker at no ...
Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog has received a complaint over a viral dashcam video of a heated dispute in a ride-hailing vehicle involving a passenger identified as singer David Lui Fong, warning that the case could be referred to police. Assistant Privacy Commissioner Fiona Lai Ho-yan said on a radio programme on Monday that passengers had a higher expectation of privacy inside for-hire vehicles, w...
After China became only the second nation after the US to achieve the controlled recovery of an orbital-class rocket booster, the spotlight has fallen on the domestic shipbuilder behind the design of the recovery platform. Following the maiden launch of China’s reusable Long March-10B rocket on Friday, the vehicle’s first-stage booster returned vertically and was caught by the Linghangzhe recovery...
An off-duty Hong Kong firefighter has been arrested after reporting an alleged assault as a victim, the South China Morning Post has learned, following a viral video showing him shouting at and shoving a young couple in a shopping centre. A source said on Monday evening that a second man, 33, had been arrested in connection with the same case and was suspected of having bumped into the firefighter...
An off-duty firefighter has been arrested in Hong Kong after reporting an alleged assault as a victim, the South China Morning Post has learned, following a viral video showing him shouting and shoving a young couple in a shopping centre. Police confirmed on Monday that a 48-year-old man was arrested the day before in connection with a dispute involving his wife and another couple inside Sim City ...
An off-duty firefighter has been arrested in Hong Kong after surrendering to police over alleged common assault, the South China Morning Post has learned, following a viral video showing him shoving and shouting at a young couple in a Mong Kok shopping centre. A source familiar with the matter told the SCMP on Monday that the 48-year-old man, who said he works as a firefighter, turned himself in a...
Rows of gold bars, stacks of US and Singapore dollars and seven suitcases found inside a locked safe have become the defining images of one of the biggest scandals to hit Indonesia’s law-enforcement establishment in years. Police said they recovered 74kg (160lbs) of gold, plus more than US$15 million in multiple currencies from a house linked to Febrie Adriansyah, who until last week served as Ind...
Hong Kong authorities will ramp up autonomous vehicle (AV) tests and make more roads available for trials as Chinese technology company Baidu prepared to transition its robotaxis to fully remote-controlled operations in the city. Baidu on Monday showcased its sixth-generation AV under its Apollo Go platform on Lantau Island, showing a seven-minute driverless route that required manual takeover aft...
Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in Jurassic Park to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in The Piano, has died. He was 78. In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted ...
Chinese-American billionaire investor Duan Yongping has increased his holdings in Pop Mart for a third time, reinforcing his long-term bullish view on the toy brand, as some questioned the sustainability of demand for the company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio led by the blockbuster Labubu doll. Duan, 65, dubbed “China’s Warren Buffett” by some investors for his investment acumen, increase...
Malaysian lawmaker Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman walked free on Monday after the Federal Court dismissed the prosecutors’ final appeal in his corruption case, ending a six-year legal battle that had threatened to derail the future of one of the country’s most recognisable young politicians. The decision was reached by a 2-1 majority, with Federal Court judges Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali and Collin Law...
Chinese researchers have developed a new all-optical interconnect system linking standard electronic chips, boosting AI distributed inference speeds by over 100 times while using just one-ninth of the typical computational resources. As AI models permeate ever more applications, the industry’s appetite for computational power has grown insatiable. The conventional response has been to pile on more...
The prestigious Zhejiang University in eastern China has registered its eagle-shaped pattern on the school emblem as a trademark, sparking heated discussion on social media that the move was aimed at preventing a possible legal battle with the luxury brand Armani. The eagle in the university’s badge bears a striking visual resemblance to the logo of the Italian high-end fashion brand, the China Bu...
European countries reported more than 10,000 excess deaths during the record-breaking heatwave that engulfed the west of the continent in late June, official data showed. The vast majority – more than 9,000 – were among people aged 65 and above, according to data published by EuroMOMO, a network backed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization. ...
Hong Kong’s weather forecaster may issue a No 1 typhoon standby signal between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, warning that the city should brace for heavy rainstorms. The Observatory said on Monday at 12.30pm that an area of low pressure over the northern part of the South China Sea would edge closer to the coast of Guangdong, with the associated cloud bands expected to take time to consolida...
North Korea rarely airs its dirty laundry in public, but Kim Jong-un’s latest purge of a senior military official was staged for maximum visibility – a warning, analysts say, to generals growing too comfortable with their expanding economic power that they answer to him alone. “Kim is effectively telling military and party leaders: ‘Don’t even think about it. You are under round-the-clock surveill...
Limited manpower, space constraints and cautious diners have led some restaurants to make the “responsible move” of withdrawing from Hong Kong’s new dog-friendly dining scheme, which has drawn about 20 complaints since its launch, the city’s hygiene chief has said. Albert Yuen Yuk-kin, director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said on Monday that most complaints involved minor iss...
Limited manpower, space constraints and cautious diners have led some restaurants to make a “responsible move” by withdrawing from Hong Kong’s new dog-friendly dining scheme, which has drawn about 20 complaints since its launch, the hygiene chief has said. Albert Yuen Yuk-kin, director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said on Monday that most complaints involved minor issues such ...
