Live headlines from trusted global sources. Click any story to open it on the original website.
Hong Kong is formulating its first five-year plan for economic and social development. Such plans are likely to become a regular feature of governance, and will shape how the city allocates land, builds housing and infrastructure, develops industries, trains talent and improves public services. They can also give government departments a common frame for action, rather than leaving them to operate...
A Chinese tourist site recently concluded a month-long position that paid 60,000 yuan (US$8,900) to live on a mountaintop, observe the cloudscape, and share daily videos of the sea of clouds. On July 8, the Laojun Mountain Scenic Area in central China’s Henan province posted a recruitment ad for a “cloudscape observer” to work from July 16 to August 15. The Laojun Mountain Scenic Area is one of Ch...
Scheduled joint US and South Korean military drills are expected to be cut by about half, according to South Korean media on Wednesday, following President Donald Trump’s order to substantially reduce US participation in the annual exercises. The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Monday, had been due to run into next week. The allies were set to complete the first, defensive phase of ...
As Hong Kong customs expands its investigation into Opatra London following complaints of high-pressure sales tactics involving purchases of up to HK$100,000 (US$12,800), former employees and customers of similar beauty chains say the aggressive sales playbook feels all too familiar. Although the UK-based luxury beauty chain – originally incorporated as Oro Gold – has distanced itself from local d...
A new film telling the story of the Iraq war through Chinese eyes marks the latest in a series of soft power initiatives designed to get Beijing’s message across to the wider world. Although Once Upon a Time in the Middle East does not explicitly state the name of the country in question, it is set in the 2000s and features an invasion by American troops. The film’s central character, a Chinese ch...
In a global first, China’s leading commercial rocket company LandSpace has recovered a stainless-steel booster after an orbital launch, marking a major step in the country’s efforts to develop lower-cost, reusable rockets. It is also the first country to succeed in orbital launch recovery down distinct technological pathways, pulling off a dual-track strategy that even the United States – which pi...
In a global first, China’s leading commercial rocket company LandSpace has recovered a stainless-steel booster after an orbital launch, marking a major step in the country’s efforts to develop lower-cost, reusable rockets. It is also the first country to succeed in orbital launch recovery down distinct technological pathways, pulling off a dual-track strategy that even the United States – which pi...
In a global first, China’s leading commercial rocket company LandSpace has recovered a stainless-steel booster after an orbital launch, marking a major step in the country’s efforts to develop lower-cost, reusable rockets. The successful mission makes Zhuque-3 China’s first commercial rocket to both reach orbit and have its first stage recovered. SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, which is also made of...
A close aide to Donald Trump is at the centre of an ugly clash between the White House and Senator Jon Ossoff, after the Democratic lawmaker drew the administration’s ire for highlighting the close nature of her relationship with the president. Natalie Harp, a 35-year-old executive assistant to the president, is little known to the public but a constant presence at Trump’s side, both in the White ...
US President Donald Trump’s abrupt move to scale back annual military drills with South Korea has handed President Lee Jae Myung a fresh impetus for greater defence self-reliance even as he seeks to maintain the long-standing alliance. Lee on Tuesday called for accelerated efforts to regain wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean forces from the United States and build nuclear-powered ...
Hong Kong’s fast-transfer payments denominated in yuan surged to a six-month high in July, signalling accelerating adoption of real-time cross-border retail payment channels even as mainland Chinese authorities maintain tight controls on capital outflows. Transaction values through Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS) for yuan reached 350.3 billion yuan (US$60 billion) in July, marking a 34 per...
The United Arab Emirates has said it is suspending all trade and financial dealings with Iran after reporting an Iranian missile attack directed at its ships. The announcement comes after a period of relative calm in the UAE, with no Iranian missiles aimed at the country since May after it bore the brunt of attacks in the early weeks of the Middle East war. Abu Dhabi has, however, accused Tehran o...
The United Arab Emirates said that two ballistic missiles were fired towards the country from Iran, the Islamic Republic’s first known attack on the Gulf nation since May as the wider Middle East war continues unabated. Both missiles fell into the sea, with one of them dropping within the UAE’s territorial waters and the other outside, the country’s defence ministry said Tuesday. Assessments indic...
As China deepens the commercialisation of its vast troves of data, the United States needs to develop its own national data strategy that treats data as an economic asset to better position itself to prevail in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics, a key US congressional advisory body has said. In a report published on Tuesday, the US-China Economic and Security Revie...
A North Point redevelopment site is being put on the market for HK$1.2 billion (US$153 million) after its owner, which spent years assembling the ageing property, warned that redeveloping it could result in losses of as much as 30 per cent. The sale offers a rare glimpse into the difficulties facing private developers in Hong Kong’s urban-renewal drive, where lengthy acquisition periods, financing...
Several top US Democratic lawmakers chided US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for easing sanctions recently on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who, they said, were “complicit in Beijing’s dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy”. “We write to express serious concern,” the four-page letter said. “It raises serious questions about the durability of US policy towards Hong Kong that we believe warrant a...
Several top US Democratic lawmakers chided US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for easing sanctions recently on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who, they said, were “complicit in Beijing’s dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy”. “We write to express serious concern,” the four-page letter said. “It raises serious questions about the durability of US policy towards Hong Kong that we believe warrant a...
Midwestern Americans watching television this summer may have been surprised to see China and bacon appearing together in political advertisements. “The corrupt Save Our Bacon scam in the farm bill – it’s a giveaway to Chinese corporations,” one advertisement declared over images of the Chinese flag and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Whose side is your senator on? America or China?” Viewers might ...
A US Navy destroyer with about 300 sailors aboard suffered a major breakdown in the Pacific Ocean last month that left it without power for four days, the Navy confirmed in a statement. The USS Benfold “reported an engineering casualty involving its generators, causing a loss of power” on July 24, Navy spokesman Commander Matthew Comer said in the statement. The breakdown meant the crew went witho...
Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University are among 30 American institutions ordered to audit their foreign research relationships, according to US officials, as higher education representatives accused the Pentagon of implying wrongdoing without publicly presenting evidence. The identities emerged after the Department of Defence announced the audit...
Mexico is weighing plans to impose further trade restrictions on selected products from China and other countries while raising existing import taxes on others, according to four people familiar with the matter. The so-called anti-dumping measures would deepen Mexico’s alignment with Washington as President Claudia Sheinbaum pursues a multi-year extension of the North American trade pact known as ...
The United States imposed sanctions on Tuesday on the International Criminal Court’s president and a senior trial lawyer at the court, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. The move is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against The Hague-based court, which was established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humani...
Meta Platforms intentionally sought to addict children to its Facebook and Instagram platforms, a lawyer for California said on Tuesday at the start of a trial that could reshape some of the most popular apps on the planet. A bipartisan group of 29 US states is suing Meta, seeking potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties and changes to how Meta does business. Four lead sta...
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in Moscow on Tuesday with Myanmar’s junta chief-turned-president, Min Aung Hlaing, discussing a wide range of issues including prospective energy deals. Russia is the first non-neighbouring country Min Aung Hlaing has visited since becoming Myanmar’s president in April, a sign of the two countries’ deepening ties in the face of pressure from the West...
US President Donald Trump paused the planned roll-out of new tariffs on some Canadian goods late on Tuesday, after negotiations between both countries that went down to the wire. The reprieve from Trump’s 50 per cent duties would last three days, the US leader said in a social media post. This was “based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalisation of documents, have a DEAL!...
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has held urgent talks with US President Donald Trump, Ottawa confirmed Tuesday, in an effort to avoid fresh US tariffs on Canadian goods as a midnight deadline fast approaches. Trump signed orders for the steep 50 per cent duties last month, with the White House alleging “discriminatory treatment” by Canada against US alcohol, car and dairy products. The tariffs...
Ahead of next month’s expected summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington, a low profile US regulatory agency has opened a new front in the technology battle between the world’s two superpowers, even as it attempts to avoid sabotaging the vital high-stakes meeting. The latest action by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in July saw it advance stri...
US President Donald Trump said that Tuesday that no talks with Iran were under way or scheduled, as he posted a map showing the Strait of Hormuz as a new American territory in a fresh jibe at Tehran. Trump has been pressing his threat to claim sovereignty over the crucial energy waterway as the nearly six-month-old Iran war grinds on with little sign of resolution. Trump’s envoy and son-in-law Jar...
A former Mos Burger branch manager, his wife and six alleged “phantom workers” have appeared in court after being charged by the city’s corruption buster for allegedly conspiring to defraud the fast-food chain of about HK$680,000 (US$86,670) in wages. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said on Tuesday that Tsui Hin‑po, former manager of the chain’s Tin Shui Wai branch, and his wi...
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is moving faster than any previous epidemic of the disease and risks spreading to more countries, the head of the World Health Organization has warned. “We must be frank: the epidemic is far from being under control,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an emergency meeting on the outbreak on Tuesday. “It had a big head start,...
